The worst example of unnecessary fact-adding that I see is the way that half the articles end with "Here's a list of a bunch of sci-fi novels, comic books, and cartoons that make a reference to this subject."
On top of that, someone always deems it fit to add "____ is also the name of a Czech blahcore band."
You don't understand the problem. A chemical reaction is only as fast as its slowest step. Catalyzing the other steps will not yield an improvement in reaction rate.
For computer programs, you won't gain anything worthwhile by optimizing code that the computer only spends 1% of its time executing. That's not to say you should do a sloppy job, but you should focus on what matters. Microoptimization techniques (those techniques that involve choices of instructions and their orders rather than changing the algorithm that is used) typically yield very small gains. Microoptimization can yield substantial benefits when used properly in heavily used sections of code, but the time involved in trying to microoptimize everything could be better used to work on macrooptimizations or organizing the code to make it more amenable to later modification.
There's no sense in trying to make your program 0.3% faster when you could be finding a way to make it 20% faster instead.
You need to play the Lifetime movie drinking game I'm working on.
When the police say they can't help the protagonist take a drink Take a bonus drink if their reason for not helping involves a flimsy technicality Have a drink when the protagonist's ex-husband enters a scene Have a drink if the protagonist's mother is unsympathetic
And so on and so forth. You'll be wasted in no time.
While Slashdot does suffer from a great deal of groupthink, the moderation system still lets through a significant number of dissenters. Perhaps not as many dissenters as it should allow, but the dissenters are not shut out.
In Linux stories you will often see that incoherent pro-Linux comments will be left unmoderated or even moderated up while incoherent anti-Linux comments are modded down. However, the system (barely) works because most coherent posts that weren't copied from someplace else (usually) get modded up regardless of whether or not they support the standard Slashdot position.
Slashdot has some pretty bad problems and it could benefit from refinements to moderation and the addition of some features (e.g. it's fairly simple to come up with a post editing mechanism that's compatible with Slashdot's moderation system). Still, Slashdot seems like the most enlightened forum on the internet after spending some time in many other web forums.
I think we'll see a lot more worms for Linux as it grows more popular, but I suspect the days of viruses that insert themselves into executables on disk are drawing to a close.
Originally DOS viruses were spread primarily through the exchange of shareware and pirated software. These days the shareware download sites are more professionally run than they used to be and it seems the pirate groups are a bit more professional too.
It's unlikely that we'll see package repositories with virus infected binaries, but it is possible we may see a compromised package repository with backdoors inserted into its binaries.
Linux isn't really ineherently more secure than Windows. The fact that a standard Linux install doesn't let normal users mess with anything important and doesn't run unnecessary services helps though. Hopefully Linux's security model will be improved before worms become a big issue.
It sounds like Zonk was trying to just tap his way through the agility course which is what I did at first. However, I found it vastly easier to simply hold down the stylus the entire way through the course.
That SUV is used to carry PETA members and their equipment to animal testing labs. PETA measures the efficiency of a vehicle in terms of animals freed per gallon.
I'm just taking a guess, but I'm guessing that a football game that is based on a different license or has no license would be unlikely to succeed in the United States.
This ridiculous minigame doesn't bother me in the least and I know it doesn't bother the majority of you in the least, but this is a big deal. This latest move may reduce some of the damage, but basically Rockstar has screwed the game industry with this. The material was clearly cut in order to avoid getting an AO rating and leaving it on the disc in any form was supremely stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think that corrupting youths should be considered a serious crime. You can say that parents should be responsible for their own children, but these people think that since children still constitute a significant portion of the video game market that video games should not contain content that could "corrupt" them. I don't agree with this and most of you don't agree with this either. However, as things stand now we have to live with these people that we disagree with.
Strengthening the ratings system is the best hope that we have for coexisting with these people. If the rating system can be made more effective we may be able to reach an understanding so that these people feel satisfied that their children are safe while allowing games marketed to adults to be unfettered. Rockstar leaving the Hot Coffee game on the disc has undermined what little faith there was in the rating system and there may be some serious repercussions. We could be talking about things like games being banned or class action lawsuits. That would of course, be a very bad thing for the game industry as a whole.
Yet again, we see an example of when Slashdot would benefit from post editing.
It really isn't that tough to make it work. All they have to do is clearly mark all edited posts and include a link that displays all past versions of the post. You can allow users to set their preferences to nullify moderations to edited posts or let them stand.
If anyone tries to pull anything sneaky by editing, there should be replies pointing it out within minutes.
The USB specification also includes interfaces for various classes of devices that might be connected to a computer. This includes things like mass storage, human interface devices, audio devices, and even network devices. The intent of the specification is that one should only need one driver for all USB mass storage devices, one driver for all human interface devices, and so on.
I suspect that the Nintendo router will come with some software for Windows and Mac to configure things properly. However, there is no reason whatsoever for it to function as anything other than a USB network device and the only problems one should face to get it working properly on Linux or BSD should be to configure the trivial routing the PC needs to do.
Ok, lots of people still don't know what this stuff is about and I can't say I blame them since I've studied it and still don't get all of it.
Ok, let's say you have a single qubit. Its state is described by a complex valued unit vector a|0>+b|1>. |0> and |1> is just shorthand for the vectors {1,0} and {0,1}. If you measure the qubit, the probability of getting a 0 is |a|^2 and a 1 is |b|^2.
You may be asking why it's necessary to have a complex valued vector space. This is because quantum gates are represented by complex valued matrices. This means that you can have a gate that acts differently on sqrt(2)/2(|0>+|1>) and sqrt(2)/2(|0>+i|1>) even though they both have the same chance of coming up as 0 and 1.
If you have a qubit in an unknown state you have no way of determining what a and b are. If you measure a qubit and it comes up as 0 then it's in the state |0> and if it's 1 then it's in the state |1>. You can also measure the qubit with respect to other bases. For example you can measure it with respect to |+>=sqrt(2)/2(|0>+|1>) and |->=sqrt(2)/2(|0>-|1>). The probability of getting |+> is equal to the absolute value of the square of the projection of the state vector onto |+>. If the result comes out as |+> then the qubit is in the state |+>.
You can't copy qubits without destroying the original. However, you can entangle qubits together so that their values are dependent on eachother. Understanding the entanglement between qubits in a quantum algorithm is of critical importance and it really makes quantum algorithms a lot harder to understand than classical algorithms.
Systems of two qubits are represented by vector spaces spanned by |00>,|01>,|10>, and |11>. Larger systems are represented similarly. Gates acting on multiple qubits are represented by unitary matrices (basically they map unit vectors to unit vectors). There are infinitely many quantum gates, but they can be approximated to infinite accuracy by using a handful of single qubit gates and CNOT gates. CNOT maps |00> to |00>, |01> to |01>, |10> to |11> and |11> to |10>.
I hope that at least some of you can follow all that.
You can't copy quantum states without destroying the original. Simple replication doesn't work. There are other tricks you can use, but nothing's perfect.
Classical ECC techniques won't work for quantum computing but they can be adapted. You can encode a single qubit across five qubits to protect against arbitrary errors (there are infinitely many possible errors) on any single qubit. You can get some protection against some errors that act symmetrically across a set of qubits by using decoherence free subspaces.
The trouble with just using ECC to refresh constantly is that you have to approximate some of the quantum gates needed to perform the refresh. It's possible to approximate them to an arbitrary accuracy, but you'll still have some error at each refresh and this error will accumulate like error in a classical analog system.
Decoherence free subspaces don't have this problem since there is no refresh phase for this technique. Basically you take advantage of the fixed points of the noise process and use a subspace spanned by these fixed points. The problem is, this technique only works in situations like sending a bunch of photons through a fiber optic cable that introduces the same error to all the photons.
Right now, I'm suspecting that we will never see any long term quantum storage. However, if you can perform operations on your qubits fast enough you may be able to get a lot done in a few seconds.
Research in QECC may still be able to provide us with some new tricks as well.
Quite frankly, I'd be satisfied if they said "We're working on a new phone, it'll be even better than the last one because it can send e-mails and surf the internet!" instead of "We are designing an nth generation wireless device which will empower users by facilitating multiple forms of digital communication."
Your analogy isn't accurate. The door doesn't just fall of the hinges when anyone knocks on it. It's more like the lock can be picked. Some locks can be picked more easily than others, but any lock will keep out someone who doesn't have the inclination to learn to pick locks.
You were shifting the blame off the intruder by suggesting that one can stumble upon a weakness entirely by accident. The truth of the matter is that a hacker has to determine what exploits a particular system is susceptible to then gain entry by appropriate means. Quite frankly I wouldn't like someone going through the neighborhood trying to find out which locks he can pick.
I do think the software makers bear some responsibility, but I don't think you can shift all of the blame to them. The fact is, from what I can see, no one produces perfect software. Even the security minded folks that produce OpenBSD have had some security holes (note: I'm counting holes in services not enabled in the default install since some people do in fact need to enable those services).
As a side note, I don't think there is a place for white hat hacking any more. The fact is that the most people do not appreciate some stranger breaking into their systems regardless of intent. This is exacerbated by the fact that it may be difficult to tell the difference between a white hat and a black hat masquerading as a white hat. All computer intrusions are illegal and I don't see a way to change the law so that only those with malicious intentions can be prosecuted.
The thing is, in the long term, there is no difference between the sell-through rate and the rate at which they are sold to retailers. They may diverge early on, but ultimately there is no reason to produce them faster than consumers buy them.
The best course of action is to have enough capacity to meet the demand once things stabilize plus enough slack capacity to accomodate any spikes in demand.
Re:No XBox version? Bastards...
on
Morpheus is Dead
·
· Score: 1
THe only problem is that even though the interface was there, the fun wasn't.
Slashdot Mirror
The worst example of unnecessary fact-adding that I see is the way that half the articles end with "Here's a list of a bunch of sci-fi novels, comic books, and cartoons that make a reference to this subject."
On top of that, someone always deems it fit to add "____ is also the name of a Czech blahcore band."
You don't understand the problem. A chemical reaction is only as fast as its slowest step. Catalyzing the other steps will not yield an improvement in reaction rate.
For computer programs, you won't gain anything worthwhile by optimizing code that the computer only spends 1% of its time executing. That's not to say you should do a sloppy job, but you should focus on what matters. Microoptimization techniques (those techniques that involve choices of instructions and their orders rather than changing the algorithm that is used) typically yield very small gains. Microoptimization can yield substantial benefits when used properly in heavily used sections of code, but the time involved in trying to microoptimize everything could be better used to work on macrooptimizations or organizing the code to make it more amenable to later modification.
There's no sense in trying to make your program 0.3% faster when you could be finding a way to make it 20% faster instead.
Why not just pay the $30 for the Nintendo USB adaptor and run the network on a separate channel from your main one?
Assuming they make it a standard USB network device, it should be trivial to get it working on Linux or OS X.
You need to play the Lifetime movie drinking game I'm working on.
When the police say they can't help the protagonist take a drink
Take a bonus drink if their reason for not helping involves a flimsy technicality
Have a drink when the protagonist's ex-husband enters a scene
Have a drink if the protagonist's mother is unsympathetic
And so on and so forth. You'll be wasted in no time.
While Slashdot does suffer from a great deal of groupthink, the moderation system still lets through a significant number of dissenters. Perhaps not as many dissenters as it should allow, but the dissenters are not shut out.
In Linux stories you will often see that incoherent pro-Linux comments will be left unmoderated or even moderated up while incoherent anti-Linux comments are modded down. However, the system (barely) works because most coherent posts that weren't copied from someplace else (usually) get modded up regardless of whether or not they support the standard Slashdot position.
Slashdot has some pretty bad problems and it could benefit from refinements to moderation and the addition of some features (e.g. it's fairly simple to come up with a post editing mechanism that's compatible with Slashdot's moderation system). Still, Slashdot seems like the most enlightened forum on the internet after spending some time in many other web forums.
I think we'll see a lot more worms for Linux as it grows more popular, but I suspect the days of viruses that insert themselves into executables on disk are drawing to a close.
Originally DOS viruses were spread primarily through the exchange of shareware and pirated software. These days the shareware download sites are more professionally run than they used to be and it seems the pirate groups are a bit more professional too.
It's unlikely that we'll see package repositories with virus infected binaries, but it is possible we may see a compromised package repository with backdoors inserted into its binaries.
Linux isn't really ineherently more secure than Windows. The fact that a standard Linux install doesn't let normal users mess with anything important and doesn't run unnecessary services helps though. Hopefully Linux's security model will be improved before worms become a big issue.
It sounds like Zonk was trying to just tap his way through the agility course which is what I did at first. However, I found it vastly easier to simply hold down the stylus the entire way through the course.
That SUV is used to carry PETA members and their equipment to animal testing labs. PETA measures the efficiency of a vehicle in terms of animals freed per gallon.
It's acceptable in casual writing, but I wouldn't use it in anything more formal.
I'm just taking a guess, but I'm guessing that a football game that is based on a different license or has no license would be unlikely to succeed in the United States.
It is better still to treat both the symptoms and the cause.
I'm pretty sure that the reason that PC gaming has been in decline is that it hasn't been going anywhere.
I can totally respect that.
This ridiculous minigame doesn't bother me in the least and I know it doesn't bother the majority of you in the least, but this is a big deal. This latest move may reduce some of the damage, but basically Rockstar has screwed the game industry with this. The material was clearly cut in order to avoid getting an AO rating and leaving it on the disc in any form was supremely stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think that corrupting youths should be considered a serious crime. You can say that parents should be responsible for their own children, but these people think that since children still constitute a significant portion of the video game market that video games should not contain content that could "corrupt" them. I don't agree with this and most of you don't agree with this either. However, as things stand now we have to live with these people that we disagree with.
Strengthening the ratings system is the best hope that we have for coexisting with these people. If the rating system can be made more effective we may be able to reach an understanding so that these people feel satisfied that their children are safe while allowing games marketed to adults to be unfettered. Rockstar leaving the Hot Coffee game on the disc has undermined what little faith there was in the rating system and there may be some serious repercussions. We could be talking about things like games being banned or class action lawsuits. That would of course, be a very bad thing for the game industry as a whole.
Yet again, we see an example of when Slashdot would benefit from post editing.
It really isn't that tough to make it work. All they have to do is clearly mark all edited posts and include a link that displays all past versions of the post. You can allow users to set their preferences to nullify moderations to edited posts or let them stand.
If anyone tries to pull anything sneaky by editing, there should be replies pointing it out within minutes.
The USB specification also includes interfaces for various classes of devices that might be connected to a computer. This includes things like mass storage, human interface devices, audio devices, and even network devices. The intent of the specification is that one should only need one driver for all USB mass storage devices, one driver for all human interface devices, and so on.
I suspect that the Nintendo router will come with some software for Windows and Mac to configure things properly. However, there is no reason whatsoever for it to function as anything other than a USB network device and the only problems one should face to get it working properly on Linux or BSD should be to configure the trivial routing the PC needs to do.
Ok, lots of people still don't know what this stuff is about and I can't say I blame them since I've studied it and still don't get all of it.
Ok, let's say you have a single qubit. Its state is described by a complex valued unit vector a|0>+b|1>. |0> and |1> is just shorthand for the vectors {1,0} and {0,1}. If you measure the qubit, the probability of getting a 0 is |a|^2 and a 1 is |b|^2.
You may be asking why it's necessary to have a complex valued vector space. This is because quantum gates are represented by complex valued matrices. This means that you can have a gate that acts differently on sqrt(2)/2(|0>+|1>) and sqrt(2)/2(|0>+i|1>) even though they both have the same chance of coming up as 0 and 1.
If you have a qubit in an unknown state you have no way of determining what a and b are. If you measure a qubit and it comes up as 0 then it's in the state |0> and if it's 1 then it's in the state |1>. You can also measure the qubit with respect to other bases. For example you can measure it with respect to |+>=sqrt(2)/2(|0>+|1>) and |->=sqrt(2)/2(|0>-|1>). The probability of getting |+> is equal to the absolute value of the square of the projection of the state vector onto |+>. If the result comes out as |+> then the qubit is in the state |+>.
You can't copy qubits without destroying the original. However, you can entangle qubits together so that their values are dependent on eachother. Understanding the entanglement between qubits in a quantum algorithm is of critical importance and it really makes quantum algorithms a lot harder to understand than classical algorithms.
Systems of two qubits are represented by vector spaces spanned by |00>,|01>,|10>, and |11>. Larger systems are represented similarly. Gates acting on multiple qubits are represented by unitary matrices (basically they map unit vectors to unit vectors). There are infinitely many quantum gates, but they can be approximated to infinite accuracy by using a handful of single qubit gates and CNOT gates. CNOT maps |00> to |00>, |01> to |01>, |10> to |11> and |11> to |10>.
I hope that at least some of you can follow all that.
You can't copy quantum states without destroying the original. Simple replication doesn't work. There are other tricks you can use, but nothing's perfect.
Classical ECC techniques won't work for quantum computing but they can be adapted. You can encode a single qubit across five qubits to protect against arbitrary errors (there are infinitely many possible errors) on any single qubit. You can get some protection against some errors that act symmetrically across a set of qubits by using decoherence free subspaces.
The trouble with just using ECC to refresh constantly is that you have to approximate some of the quantum gates needed to perform the refresh. It's possible to approximate them to an arbitrary accuracy, but you'll still have some error at each refresh and this error will accumulate like error in a classical analog system.
Decoherence free subspaces don't have this problem since there is no refresh phase for this technique. Basically you take advantage of the fixed points of the noise process and use a subspace spanned by these fixed points. The problem is, this technique only works in situations like sending a bunch of photons through a fiber optic cable that introduces the same error to all the photons.
Right now, I'm suspecting that we will never see any long term quantum storage. However, if you can perform operations on your qubits fast enough you may be able to get a lot done in a few seconds.
Research in QECC may still be able to provide us with some new tricks as well.
Quite frankly, I'd be satisfied if they said "We're working on a new phone, it'll be even better than the last one because it can send e-mails and surf the internet!" instead of "We are designing an nth generation wireless device which will empower users by facilitating multiple forms of digital communication."
If these places are unfinished, why is this content even on the live servers?
Your analogy isn't accurate. The door doesn't just fall of the hinges when anyone knocks on it. It's more like the lock can be picked. Some locks can be picked more easily than others, but any lock will keep out someone who doesn't have the inclination to learn to pick locks.
You were shifting the blame off the intruder by suggesting that one can stumble upon a weakness entirely by accident. The truth of the matter is that a hacker has to determine what exploits a particular system is susceptible to then gain entry by appropriate means. Quite frankly I wouldn't like someone going through the neighborhood trying to find out which locks he can pick.
I do think the software makers bear some responsibility, but I don't think you can shift all of the blame to them. The fact is, from what I can see, no one produces perfect software. Even the security minded folks that produce OpenBSD have had some security holes (note: I'm counting holes in services not enabled in the default install since some people do in fact need to enable those services).
As a side note, I don't think there is a place for white hat hacking any more. The fact is that the most people do not appreciate some stranger breaking into their systems regardless of intent. This is exacerbated by the fact that it may be difficult to tell the difference between a white hat and a black hat masquerading as a white hat. All computer intrusions are illegal and I don't see a way to change the law so that only those with malicious intentions can be prosecuted.
The "Sith" was more like a Sith wannabe. She did have a great natural talent with the dark side, but no formal training in the ways of the Sith.
The thing is, in the long term, there is no difference between the sell-through rate and the rate at which they are sold to retailers. They may diverge early on, but ultimately there is no reason to produce them faster than consumers buy them.
The best course of action is to have enough capacity to meet the demand once things stabilize plus enough slack capacity to accomodate any spikes in demand.
THe only problem is that even though the interface was there, the fun wasn't.