I would think an even bigger problem would be general stability. Sure, you can theoretically control an object skeetering along a wall with two adjustable ropes (like the jpgs seem to indicate Hektor does), but what about factoring in wind...not only with the hektor device, but concerning the paint its spraying too.
I'm sure there's a pretty viable mathematical formula which could express the position of the robot as a function of rope lengths, even when taking into account stretch induced by the ropes own tension. However, to conteract wind gusts blowing the paint off target and making a sloppy mess, you would probably need some serious "on the fly" computing.
I ended up buying a cheapo Philips learning remote. It was one of the cheapest learning remotes I could find...right around the $20-$30 pricepoint I was looking for. My advice for anyone thinking about spending at that level is to pony up the cash for something better.
Most learning remotes include a "database" of IR codes for popular a/v systems. I had mixed luck here. For instance, my VCR was recognized perfectly. My TV was recognized partially, meaning that I can change channels, but not use the setup menus. Fine, I programmed a few additional buttons using the learning feature, and was good to go.
My stereo reciever was not recognized at all. ARG! That got me a little peeved, but I spent a few minutes and started programming individual buttons again. However, I ran into a problem where certain buttons could not be programmed in! After troubleshooting this problem, I realized what the real problem was: The remote can indeed learn individual keys, but it's got to store that info somewhere, and the "640k-should-be-enough-for-anyone" stick of flash they put in there apparently wasn't enough to program in an entire remote! So while my remote was sold as a 5-function remote (replaces 5 remotes) it couldn't handle even two remotes worth of individually programmed keys.
My final frustration was that my DVD remote could not be programmed at all. Even if I removed some of my pre-existing codes to free up needed storage space, It was a no go. The learning feature flat-out wouldn't work!
I don't believe my dissapointments are tied to my particular remote. Its a common trap I (and other electronics consumers) fall into. Moral of the story; unless 100% of your components are between 1 and 3 years old and all from the exact same company making the universal remote, treat a universal remote as a vital component of the system and spend accordingly.
It's just damn unlikely to get 2 files with same MD5, and if you wanted to brute force it, you would have to try average 2^64 different files before you found one with identical MD5 to another file. And this would take a long time (actually not that terribly long, a few years at most, and it parallelizes perfectly)
Actually, 2^128 possibilities dictates that you can expect to try 2^127 different files (assuming pure brute force and the law of averages). This would take *signifigantly* longer than 2^64...in particular, about 2^63 times longer.
Quick calculations will show that this would still take a billion computers (running a billion md5sums per second!) over 5 trillion years. I think we can say that the possibility is nil.
Okay, I know this is a lil' off topic, but as one of the (presumably) many slashdot readers who play poker...has anyone found an online poker room that you can play for real $$$ where I don't need to download some windowsware to play?
I've toyed around with the java-based yahoo rooms (which last I checked, didn't have a real $$$ option). All of the big name poker rooms that I've seen through friends require a windows based client. I've been dying to give it a try.
I'd also be interested in anything anyone wants to post under this thread about poker room security. Are there many malicous online poker room opponents out there? I've seen a few cases where someone was about to sweep in a hold'em hand, holding the nuts(*), only to be booted off the game at the last second...any thoughts?
(*) Attn Trolls: This is an actual poker term.
Author finds his own inconsistencies...
on
Making Change
·
· Score: 1
In the paper, underneath the section titled "Greedy methods for change-making" the author points out one nice feature of our current system of change, that the optimal number of coins are given when they are given "greedily", that is, as many of the largest denomination are given as possible, then the next largest, then the third largest, and so on.
He points out that this wouldn't be the case in a new system with an 18c coin. For instance, if I owe your 36 cents, The optimal choice would be 2 18 cent coins. However, If I give you change "greedily", you'll get a 25c, 10c, and 1c...3 coins!
The point is that we MUST have a change system with greedily administered change in order for optimality to be relevent. How the hell is a McDonalds clerk going to be expected to solve a non-linear optimization problem each time someone needs change!!!
Re:Schools of fish swimming toward Las Vegas
on
Positively Fifth Street
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Short answer...poker is getting to be a more difficult game to win at.
Most semi-pro (or uber-recreational) players will tell you that this influx of fresh blood has made poker an even more difficult game to win at. The reason? Of the new generation of players, most are members of the scientific intelligentsia. Take Chris Ferguson, previous world champion. Education? Try a Ph.D. in Computer science.
Other pros include dotcom richies, programmers, mathematicians, assorted professionals, etc. This new generation doesn't consist of the unemployed gambling addicts of yore, but rather the brain trust of the 21st century. BEWARE!
New generation players *know* how to calculate odds. That's a given. They can play by the book, because they're smart, and they have memorized the book and can even derive the book for themselves if need be. However, psychologically speaking, they are still susceptible to tells, tilting, and otherwise predictable bluff strategy.
Bellin's book rocks by the way. Start with Bellin.
Yes, the US has a long history of lynching people. But I don't think you can judge a country from its not-so-recent history. Here is an example:
I've gathered from your webpage that you are Finnish. Finland, if I remember correctly, was allied with Nazi Germany, so was in fact using violence as an *offensive* (not defensive) approach to forward their political views. I assume that Finland's history of Nazi sympathy is not indicative of its current politcal environment, as is the case for the American history of lynchings.
You may find out that the American instinct to stomp out violent individuals with (unfortunately) more violence has in fact worked, and it has worked to the extent of giving most of Europe liberation about 56 years ago. People who are calling Americans "violent" or "barbaric" might want to consider, not superficially, but rather deeply, over the next few weeks, how America has affected their lives, and what the world could be like if America had never been. I may be an ignorant patriot, and I'm sure people will quickly tell me so, but I think most countries have benefitted from American influence. I'm sure as hell Finland has.
Bullshit. Microsoft will die computers and the web die. I happen to believe that this isn't going to be in my lifetime. Even though the average corporation may die in 40 years, who the hell thinks Microsoft is "average"?
I'm not a big Microsoft hater. As long as the basics of computing (x86 architecture, protocols for information transfer, etc.) remain open and knowable to the general public, I know that Linux will continue to exist...and that's all I need to be happy.
However, with the crap that Microsoft has been saying about Linux lately, I don't know if I can count on that anymore. Maybe I'm paranoid. Or maybe I'm looking at the history of Microsoft, the things they've been saying recently to the effect of Linux = disease, and making a reasonable extrapolation on what the future will be like.
I'm beginning to think that the answer to the question "where do you want to go today?" is going to be (or already is) "wherever the hell we say you're going!"
I remember a scene from the movie Running Man , where Arnold was looking through the female lead's cassette collection, and saying "They're all on the censored list". I remember that in particular, because I told the guys I was watching the movie with that the crime of owning "illegal uncensored music" was preposterous. And that we would never see anything that stupid in a civilized democratic country...ya ya ya...needless to say, I'm sighing and eating my foot now.
Could we send a rocket up to give the moon a 'kick' once in a while?
No. The amount of energy that it would take to move the moon back to its proper location would equal (ideally) everything we could generate from the tides. Throw in friction, and it becomes a losing battle. We'd be better off just using the potential energy inherent in the rocket system as energy directly.
I don't think flops will be able to replace Ghz, what with the idea of a floating point operation recently becoming "obsolete". To quote the Matlab version 6 help file for the function FLOPS (available in Matlab 5.3.11 and prior):
This is an obsolete function. With the incorporation of LAPACK in MATLAB version 6, counting floating-point operations is no longer practical.
While I have to admit that FLOPS did't give a 100% accurate picture of whats going on, it was nice to test an algorithm and see if the actual flop count matched the theoretical count...or to get a rough idea of what constants are associated with the order of the algorithm. Thank God for Octave!
Go to the linuxcare site...he's got 2.4.0a out now. It fixes all of the RHL6.2 bugs. I'm running it right now. WOOHOO...Got to go buy a ream so I can run./postersize letter 10
I love what AMD did to the price of processors...they're the only reason I was able to move out of my Cyrix PR200. I think Transmeta would do well with a company that has large venture capital and a big linux fanbase (if/. comments are any indication). That coupled with the nonpositive public response to P4 and IA-64, AMD might very well step in front of Intel if this were to go through.
What does it mean to be five times thinner ? To me, it means nothing. Five times thinner than what? Why can't people say, "One fifth as thick..." Hell, I'd even settle for "One fifth as thin"
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't it time again for the "which distro" poll *hint*?
I would think an even bigger problem would be general stability. Sure, you can theoretically control an object skeetering along a wall with two adjustable ropes (like the jpgs seem to indicate Hektor does), but what about factoring in wind...not only with the hektor device, but concerning the paint its spraying too.
I'm sure there's a pretty viable mathematical formula which could express the position of the robot as a function of rope lengths, even when taking into account stretch induced by the ropes own tension. However, to conteract wind gusts blowing the paint off target and making a sloppy mess, you would probably need some serious "on the fly" computing.
I ended up buying a cheapo Philips learning remote. It was one of the cheapest learning remotes I could find...right around the $20-$30 pricepoint I was looking for. My advice for anyone thinking about spending at that level is to pony up the cash for something better.
Most learning remotes include a "database" of IR codes for popular a/v systems. I had mixed luck here. For instance, my VCR was recognized perfectly. My TV was recognized partially, meaning that I can change channels, but not use the setup menus. Fine, I programmed a few additional buttons using the learning feature, and was good to go.
My stereo reciever was not recognized at all. ARG! That got me a little peeved, but I spent a few minutes and started programming individual buttons again. However, I ran into a problem where certain buttons could not be programmed in! After troubleshooting this problem, I realized what the real problem was: The remote can indeed learn individual keys, but it's got to store that info somewhere, and the "640k-should-be-enough-for-anyone" stick of flash they put in there apparently wasn't enough to program in an entire remote! So while my remote was sold as a 5-function remote (replaces 5 remotes) it couldn't handle even two remotes worth of individually programmed keys.
My final frustration was that my DVD remote could not be programmed at all. Even if I removed some of my pre-existing codes to free up needed storage space, It was a no go. The learning feature flat-out wouldn't work!
I don't believe my dissapointments are tied to my particular remote. Its a common trap I (and other electronics consumers) fall into. Moral of the story; unless 100% of your components are between 1 and 3 years old and all from the exact same company making the universal remote, treat a universal remote as a vital component of the system and spend accordingly.
Yeh that annoys me. Just drop frames or something...
There is exactly such a command that can be fed to mplayer on the command line:
> mplayer -framedrop file.mpg
It's just damn unlikely to get 2 files with same MD5, and if you wanted to brute force it, you would have to try average 2^64 different files before you found one with identical MD5 to another file. And this would take a long time (actually not that terribly long, a few years at most, and it parallelizes perfectly)
Actually, 2^128 possibilities dictates that you can expect to try 2^127 different files (assuming pure brute force and the law of averages). This would take *signifigantly* longer than 2^64...in particular, about 2^63 times longer.
Quick calculations will show that this would still take a billion computers (running a billion md5sums per second!) over 5 trillion years. I think we can say that the possibility is nil.
Okay, I know this is a lil' off topic, but as one of the (presumably) many slashdot readers who play poker...has anyone found an online poker room that you can play for real $$$ where I don't need to download some windowsware to play?
I've toyed around with the java-based yahoo rooms (which last I checked, didn't have a real $$$ option). All of the big name poker rooms that I've seen through friends require a windows based client. I've been dying to give it a try.
I'd also be interested in anything anyone wants to post under this thread about poker room security. Are there many malicous online poker room opponents out there? I've seen a few cases where someone was about to sweep in a hold'em hand, holding the nuts(*), only to be booted off the game at the last second...any thoughts?
(*) Attn Trolls: This is an actual poker term.
In the paper, underneath the section titled "Greedy methods for change-making" the author points out one nice feature of our current system of change, that the optimal number of coins are given when they are given "greedily", that is, as many of the largest denomination are given as possible, then the next largest, then the third largest, and so on.
He points out that this wouldn't be the case in a new system with an 18c coin. For instance, if I owe your 36 cents, The optimal choice would be 2 18 cent coins. However, If I give you change "greedily", you'll get a 25c, 10c, and 1c...3 coins!
The point is that we MUST have a change system with greedily administered change in order for optimality to be relevent. How the hell is a McDonalds clerk going to be expected to solve a non-linear optimization problem each time someone needs change!!!
Short answer...poker is getting to be a more difficult game to win at.
Most semi-pro (or uber-recreational) players will tell you that this influx of fresh blood has made poker an even more difficult game to win at. The reason? Of the new generation of players, most are members of the scientific intelligentsia. Take Chris Ferguson, previous world champion. Education? Try a Ph.D. in Computer science.
Other pros include dotcom richies, programmers, mathematicians, assorted professionals, etc. This new generation doesn't consist of the unemployed gambling addicts of yore, but rather the brain trust of the 21st century. BEWARE!
New generation players *know* how to calculate odds. That's a given. They can play by the book, because they're smart, and they have memorized the book and can even derive the book for themselves if need be. However, psychologically speaking, they are still susceptible to tells, tilting, and otherwise predictable bluff strategy.
Bellin's book rocks by the way. Start with Bellin.
All the need to do is invent another virus that makes some other organ function as a liver!
...and we all know that the appendix is a good-for-nothing, organ.
I second that! But I see a vicious cycle occuring...
1. Drink alcohol. Liver goes out. Virus ingested to cause pancreas to function as liver.
2. Pancreas begins functioning as liver. Now we have
Pancreas = Pancreas + Liver
The extra workload causes pancreas to fail.
3. Virus #2 must be invented.
Appendix = Appendix + Pancreas + Liver.
.
.
.
n. Head stuck in climate controlled jar ala Futurama (esp. season 1)...
The future is now!
1. Go to the official ftp.redhat.com site and get the MD5SUM:
efab549656a1a85ab8fa39eb873eff0e enigma-SRPMS-disc1.iso
70703897af7703b40e41777a3aa186c3 enigma-SRPMS-disc2.iso
cf7bce0c1cdbfedfae29e60aef202f6f enigma-i386-disc1.iso
fd705b3e5d0e37a828db35d21195a9f6 enigma-i386-disc2.iso
2. Go to any available mirror that isn't slashdotted...I found:
ftp://linux.nssl.noaa.gov
Yes, the US has a long history of lynching people. But I don't think you can judge a country from its not-so-recent history. Here is an example:
I've gathered from your webpage that you are Finnish. Finland, if I remember correctly, was allied with Nazi Germany, so was in fact using violence as an *offensive* (not defensive) approach to forward their political views. I assume that Finland's history of Nazi sympathy is not indicative of its current politcal environment, as is the case for the American history of lynchings.
You may find out that the American instinct to stomp out violent individuals with (unfortunately) more violence has in fact worked, and it has worked to the extent of giving most of Europe liberation about 56 years ago. People who are calling Americans "violent" or "barbaric" might want to consider, not superficially, but rather deeply, over the next few weeks, how America has affected their lives, and what the world could be like if America had never been. I may be an ignorant patriot, and I'm sure people will quickly tell me so, but I think most countries have benefitted from American influence. I'm sure as hell Finland has.
Maybe NASA's JPL could team with DoubleClick or something ... have your banner floating in space with the possibility of E.T.'s seeing it ;)
"All your cool, refreshing, Coca-Cola Classic are belong to us."
(god, I can't believe that I stooped to this low rung of slashdotting)
Bullshit. Microsoft will die computers and the web die. I happen to believe that this isn't going to be in my lifetime. Even though the average corporation may die in 40 years, who the hell thinks Microsoft is "average"?
I'm not a big Microsoft hater. As long as the basics of computing (x86 architecture, protocols for information transfer, etc.) remain open and knowable to the general public, I know that Linux will continue to exist...and that's all I need to be happy.
However, with the crap that Microsoft has been saying about Linux lately, I don't know if I can count on that anymore. Maybe I'm paranoid. Or maybe I'm looking at the history of Microsoft, the things they've been saying recently to the effect of Linux = disease, and making a reasonable extrapolation on what the future will be like.
I'm beginning to think that the answer to the question "where do you want to go today?" is going to be (or already is) "wherever the hell we say you're going!"
but it ain't email! If someone really wants to get the geeks working, they'd implement a NetNanny style filter for /.
Yea, the thing looks pretty cool...does it turn on?
I remember a scene from the movie Running Man , where Arnold was looking through the female lead's cassette collection, and saying "They're all on the censored list". I remember that in particular, because I told the guys I was watching the movie with that the crime of owning "illegal uncensored music" was preposterous. And that we would never see anything that stupid in a civilized democratic country...ya ya ya...needless to say, I'm sighing and eating my foot now.
Could we send a rocket up to give the moon a 'kick' once in a while?
No. The amount of energy that it would take to move the moon back to its proper location would equal (ideally) everything we could generate from the tides. Throw in friction, and it becomes a losing battle. We'd be better off just using the potential energy inherent in the rocket system as energy directly.
I don't think flops will be able to replace Ghz, what with the idea of a floating point operation recently becoming "obsolete". To quote the Matlab version 6 help file for the function FLOPS (available in Matlab 5.3.11 and prior):
This is an obsolete function. With the incorporation of LAPACK in MATLAB version 6, counting floating-point operations is no longer practical.
While I have to admit that FLOPS did't give a 100% accurate picture of whats going on, it was nice to test an algorithm and see if the actual flop count matched the theoretical count...or to get a rough idea of what constants are associated with the order of the algorithm. Thank God for Octave!
Go to the linuxcare site...he's got 2.4.0a out now. It fixes all of the RHL6.2 bugs. I'm running it right now. WOOHOO...Got to go buy a ream so I can run ./postersize letter 10
I love what AMD did to the price of processors...they're the only reason I was able to move out of my Cyrix PR200. I think Transmeta would do well with a company that has large venture capital and a big linux fanbase (if /. comments are any indication). That coupled with the nonpositive public response to P4 and IA-64, AMD might very well step in front of Intel if this were to go through.
What does it mean to be five times thinner ? To me, it means nothing. Five times thinner than what? Why can't people say, "One fifth as thick..." Hell, I'd even settle for "One fifth as thin"