Um, Bill Gates took graduate level math courses at Harvard. Of course, he probably also knows the difference between a "coolness factor" and a numerical factor...
2+2=1. 4 doesn't exist in base 3.
2+2=0. 4 doesn't exist in base 4.
2+2=22, where + is defined as concatenation Do any of these details change the fact that 2 added to 2 is 4? (And by the way, 2+2=11 in base three. Base three doesn't have a fourth digit, but that doesn't make 1=4. Likewise, 2+2=10 in base four.)
The point the original poster was trying to make, which you seem to have totally missed, was that mathematics and science have different concepts of "proof." In science, proof is based on experiment and observation. In mathematics, proofs are perfect and immutable. 2+2=4, always. It cannot be proven wrong by experiment, because the concept of "doing an experiment" is outside the domain of math.
Godel says otherwise. There are true things in mathematics and the physical world which cannot be proven or disproven. If you don't believe this, then please provide me with a proof or disproof of the Axiom of Choice. Again, you are only confusing the issue. I doubt Godel would approve of this kind of obfuscation, even if you did use the words "axiom of choice." Yes, axioms are assumptions, and cannot be proved. But proof in the real world (tm) is a different ball game. Remember, you can't mathematically prove anything about the real world. All you can do is make a mathematical model and assume that it's true. Then, you can begin proving things based on your initial assumptions. But at some point your model will break down. Planets are not perfect spheres; newton's law is not completely correct; gasses are not quite ideal. Usually these deviations are minor, but sometimes a serious conceptual error comes up, like a force you forgot to include or a particle you didn't even imagine could exist. Science is based on probabilities, not on certainties.
The point of this thread is not that mathematics is "better" than science, or vice versa, but that they are different fields. A mathematician who tried to prove something by finding a lot of examples would be laughed at. A scientist who tried to disprove Einstein's theory with number theory would be dismissed as irrelevant.
I think that what jmauro was trying to say was that it's possible to have an adaptation that is helpful in the short term but harmful in the long term. Conversely, it is possible to be fit for most conditions, but unfit for a highly specific condition that arises. The dinosaurs could then have been wiped out by the sun-blocking (plant-killing!) dust of a meteor, or changes in climate. From this he draws the conclusion that "mammals are no better than dinosaurs, just luckier."
I'm not sure I agree with this conclusion. I believe that, given enough time, "whatever can go wrong, will go wrong." Systems that have a critical weakness tend to suffer from that weakness eventually. Adaptations and evolutionary strategies that are harmful in the long term tend to disappear in the long term, although they can persist for a surprisingly long amount of time.
For example: If there were small dinosaurs (and we know that there were) why didn't they survive, while small mammals proliferated? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember hearing that the only real descendants of the dinosaurs alive today are birds. This suggests that, rather than getting "unlucky," dinosaurs were forced out of their ecological niches by mammals and other creatures better adapted to their environments.
It would be a mistake to view ecological change as a matter of luck OR "fitness." Environmental variations can give evolution a boost.
Your name is euroderf. Get a clue, no self-respecting European would call themselves that.
You complain about conformity, and then advocate consolidation of power. LOL. Btw, if you really had seen europe in your life, you wouldn't call their nation-states "emasculated." And if you had a brain larger than a small ferret you wouldn't compare the U.S.S.R.'s centralized military, secret police, and miscellaneous thugs to the Feds in the U.S. Ha!
Lastly, radicals don't call themselves radical, in so many words. Your final sentence exposes you as a complete poseur. You'd be better off as a right-wing troll. Or one of the gay first posters.
It's surely not just a big bank account and some mislead religious fanatism. That's just the surface.
People search for meaning in the oddest places. Here's a hint: fanatisicism may be exactly the cause of this tragedy. You sound like a rape victim who believe's she "must be guilty somehow."
All people deserve respect, no matter what their social or economic status is. But to argue that every profession requires the same amount of intelligence or skill is ridiculous. I've worked at a grocery store before, and the work there was menial and boring. The workers found their intellectual stimulation, such as it was, outside their jobs. And however anti-progressive, autocratic, reactionary, or "ungood" you may feel it is to lump all blue-collar workers together as lower-paid and less skilled, it is true.
Intelligence is not a sufficient condition to ensure high social status or pay, but, statistically speaking, it is necessary. Unfortunately, a lot of dot-com workers are about to discover their market valuation has changed considerably with the bursting of the high-tech bubble.
I agree. Unfortunately, it seems like this "breakthrough" is just more hype on the part of strong-AI advocates. Haven't we heard about this before? "Eliza" and other "conversation programs" come to mind.
Besides, the Turing test may not, in fact, be a valid indicator of intelligence. Almost everyone has had the experience of mistaking the wind blowing open a door for someone entering a room. Fooling someone into thinking the computer is making intelligent replies is similar in nature. Until we repudiate the "perception is reality" credo of certain strong-AI advocates and focus on basic mental structures, we will not make much progress.
****TROLL ALERT****
Attention, viewers. The seemingly innocuous post you have just read contains elements (overblown phraseology, potentially offensive generalizations) strongly suggestive of the "craft" of trolling.
This craft, practiced in secret by middle-aged virgins, aims to evoke a reaction in the viewer. Any reaction, even one of simple digust at the puerile fantasies and primitive intellects of the troller, is acceptable for their purposes. Watch out for "goat sex" and "nazi harangues," two standard troll formats.
More discerning trolls, such as the previous post, taste the joys of the provocateur's art on a more exalted plane. Stirring up the blind fantaticism of GNU/losers and Microserfs becomes, for them, not the tangential consequence of electronic dialog, but its sole object and intent.
But I digress. The final word on trolling is that it is in every way reprehenible: stultifying to intellectual congress, frustrating to social interaction, and maddenning to the aesthetic sensibilities. In no way should you respond or acknowledge the presence of a troll, even to denigrate it.
In my experience, SUVs begin to look very attractive when you decide to take a load of passengers and assorted cargo across a small mountain range with nothing but logging roads to drive on (yes, I've done it, and there was a good reason).
Jolly good show! Let's mount an expedition at once. Our destination shall be the Quick-E-Mart on the corner. I'm afraid we'll have to bring our heavy gear, as this is darkest suburbia. Bully!
Ah, yes, and chaps... we'll refill our gas again on the way back to tide us over on the way back.
The reason is, there's only so far private individuals (as opposed to companies) can go before they run out of resources. The assumption that he has experimented with OpenGL, and no more, is probably completely valid.
The days of programming 3D as a hobby are mostly over. D3D and OpenGL are complicated. Designing 3D worlds using all these whiz-bang features is even more complicated, and most coders won't take the time to learn these skills, especially given the open-source community's notable bias against graphical "fluff" (and usable interfaces). Some may already know 3D stuff from their jobs, or really want to learn it on their own, but for the majority, it's terra incognita.
hehe... if Max Payne is like that, I have almost no doubt it would fail on my computer.
My computer is a box with lots of generic components I put together myself around a Duron. It never fails to trip on crappy code.
This usually isn't a big problem because crappy code generally isn't something I want to run, but it can be a problem... for example, Bleem (Playstation emulator) chokes on my computer.
Don't be so serious about fun, man. I think the advance of graphics technology is admirable in its own right. It will ultimately expand the possibilities for game designers.
I always used a straight-backed wooden chair, and never had any problems whatsoever. Recliners are for reclining, office chairs are for workin'.
Oh, and one more thing... I always like to have space to put my wrists on the table when I type. Does anyone else think that the way most computer terminals are set up is unconfortable?
Just another Random Rant from someone who should really know better by now.:P
First of all-- stop worrying about "cpu-friendliness." In a few years 2 GHz and over processors will be dirt cheap. Open your eyes and realize what most people already see-- that the days of transmitting in plaintext to save processing power on your Commodore 64 are over.
Secondly, how old any format is has *nothing* to do with its quality. And as the previous poster mentioned, ASN.1 is used a lot, unlike XML itself.
XML's strenth lies on the not-so-tight coupleness of the two parties
What the hell are you talking about? The sender and receiver always have to understand each other.
Read the comment earlier: ASN.1 parsers are simple and straightforward to implement, fast, their output is architecture independent, and the technology is very stable. Most important, this is a PRESENTATION LAYER protocol, not an APPLICATION LAYER protocol. The semantics of the encoding are left to the XML program.
It seems incredible to me that the Ogg Vorbis people don't understand the need to open up the specs. Having to resort to reverse engineering is ridiculous.
I am a computer engineer, but I realize that for people without the inclination and time to plow through it, code is a very effective tool for obfuscation. (Even when it is free as in speech.)
Don't convert from mp3 to ogg. Both are lossy formats, and they use completely different encoding schemes. The quality of your music will suffer if you do.
Slashdot Mirror
it's trying to say "first post." But the author is stupid and didn't compose it in a monospaced font.
Um, Bill Gates took graduate level math courses at Harvard. Of course, he probably also knows the difference between a "coolness factor" and a numerical factor...
2+2=1. 4 doesn't exist in base 3.
2+2=0. 4 doesn't exist in base 4.
2+2=22, where + is defined as concatenation
Do any of these details change the fact that 2 added to 2 is 4? (And by the way, 2+2=11 in base three. Base three doesn't have a fourth digit, but that doesn't make 1=4. Likewise, 2+2=10 in base four.)
The point the original poster was trying to make, which you seem to have totally missed, was that mathematics and science have different concepts of "proof." In science, proof is based on experiment and observation. In mathematics, proofs are perfect and immutable. 2+2=4, always. It cannot be proven wrong by experiment, because the concept of "doing an experiment" is outside the domain of math.
Godel says otherwise. There are true things in mathematics and the physical world which cannot be proven or disproven. If you don't believe this, then please provide me with a proof or disproof of the Axiom of Choice.
Again, you are only confusing the issue. I doubt Godel would approve of this kind of obfuscation, even if you did use the words "axiom of choice." Yes, axioms are assumptions, and cannot be proved. But proof in the real world (tm) is a different ball game. Remember, you can't mathematically prove anything about the real world. All you can do is make a mathematical model and assume that it's true. Then, you can begin proving things based on your initial assumptions. But at some point your model will break down. Planets are not perfect spheres; newton's law is not completely correct; gasses are not quite ideal. Usually these deviations are minor, but sometimes a serious conceptual error comes up, like a force you forgot to include or a particle you didn't even imagine could exist. Science is based on probabilities, not on certainties.
The point of this thread is not that mathematics is "better" than science, or vice versa, but that they are different fields. A mathematician who tried to prove something by finding a lot of examples would be laughed at. A scientist who tried to disprove Einstein's theory with number theory would be dismissed as irrelevant.
I think that what jmauro was trying to say was that it's possible to have an adaptation that is helpful in the short term but harmful in the long term. Conversely, it is possible to be fit for most conditions, but unfit for a highly specific condition that arises. The dinosaurs could then have been wiped out by the sun-blocking (plant-killing!) dust of a meteor, or changes in climate. From this he draws the conclusion that "mammals are no better than dinosaurs, just luckier."
I'm not sure I agree with this conclusion. I believe that, given enough time, "whatever can go wrong, will go wrong." Systems that have a critical weakness tend to suffer from that weakness eventually. Adaptations and evolutionary strategies that are harmful in the long term tend to disappear in the long term, although they can persist for a surprisingly long amount of time.
For example: If there were small dinosaurs (and we know that there were) why didn't they survive, while small mammals proliferated? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember hearing that the only real descendants of the dinosaurs alive today are birds. This suggests that, rather than getting "unlucky," dinosaurs were forced out of their ecological niches by mammals and other creatures better adapted to their environments.
It would be a mistake to view ecological change as a matter of luck OR "fitness." Environmental variations can give evolution a boost.
Ok, you are a troll, and here's why:
Your name is euroderf. Get a clue, no self-respecting European would call themselves that.
You complain about conformity, and then advocate consolidation of power. LOL. Btw, if you really had seen europe in your life, you wouldn't call their nation-states "emasculated." And if you had a brain larger than a small ferret you wouldn't compare the U.S.S.R.'s centralized military, secret police, and miscellaneous thugs to the Feds in the U.S. Ha!
Lastly, radicals don't call themselves radical, in so many words. Your final sentence exposes you as a complete poseur. You'd be better off as a right-wing troll. Or one of the gay first posters.
Activate Arnold Schwartzenager voice:
Your puny leetle oparateeng seestem makes joo veek und vutile.
Gnoome ees unly a stupidt leetle eemitation oof Mikrosoft Weendows, the mohst powaful veendowing seestem een za vurld.
It's surely not just a big bank account and some mislead religious fanatism. That's just the surface.
People search for meaning in the oddest places. Here's a hint: fanatisicism may be exactly the cause of this tragedy. You sound like a rape victim who believe's she "must be guilty somehow."
Intelligence is not a sufficient condition to ensure high social status or pay, but, statistically speaking, it is necessary. Unfortunately, a lot of dot-com workers are about to discover their market valuation has changed considerably with the bursting of the high-tech bubble.
lol
the movie really sucked folks. I mean blew the big one.
Besides, the Turing test may not, in fact, be a valid indicator of intelligence. Almost everyone has had the experience of mistaking the wind blowing open a door for someone entering a room. Fooling someone into thinking the computer is making intelligent replies is similar in nature. Until we repudiate the "perception is reality" credo of certain strong-AI advocates and focus on basic mental structures, we will not make much progress.
****TROLL ALERT****
Attention, viewers. The seemingly innocuous post you have just read contains elements (overblown phraseology, potentially offensive generalizations) strongly suggestive of the "craft" of trolling.
This craft, practiced in secret by middle-aged virgins, aims to evoke a reaction in the viewer. Any reaction, even one of simple digust at the puerile fantasies and primitive intellects of the troller, is acceptable for their purposes. Watch out for "goat sex" and "nazi harangues," two standard troll formats.
More discerning trolls, such as the previous post, taste the joys of the provocateur's art on a more exalted plane. Stirring up the blind fantaticism of GNU/losers and Microserfs becomes, for them, not the tangential consequence of electronic dialog, but its sole object and intent.
But I digress. The final word on trolling is that it is in every way reprehenible: stultifying to intellectual congress, frustrating to social interaction, and maddenning to the aesthetic sensibilities. In no way should you respond or acknowledge the presence of a troll, even to denigrate it.
And by the way, Vi sucks.
In my experience, SUVs begin to look very attractive when you decide to take a load of passengers and assorted cargo across a small mountain range with nothing but logging roads to drive on (yes, I've done it, and there was a good reason).
Jolly good show! Let's mount an expedition at once. Our destination shall be the Quick-E-Mart on the corner. I'm afraid we'll have to bring our heavy gear, as this is darkest suburbia. Bully!
Ah, yes, and chaps... we'll refill our gas again on the way back to tide us over on the way back.
The days of programming 3D as a hobby are mostly over. D3D and OpenGL are complicated. Designing 3D worlds using all these whiz-bang features is even more complicated, and most coders won't take the time to learn these skills, especially given the open-source community's notable bias against graphical "fluff" (and usable interfaces). Some may already know 3D stuff from their jobs, or really want to learn it on their own, but for the majority, it's terra incognita.
My computer is a box with lots of generic components I put together myself around a Duron. It never fails to trip on crappy code.
This usually isn't a big problem because crappy code generally isn't something I want to run, but it can be a problem... for example, Bleem (Playstation emulator) chokes on my computer.
Yes, RTS can come down to build and attack, but it is pretty fun nonetheless. The whole thing is in the strategy.
Oh, and one more thing... I always like to have space to put my wrists on the table when I type. Does anyone else think that the way most computer terminals are set up is unconfortable?
Just another Random Rant from someone who should really know better by now. :P
Secondly, how old any format is has *nothing* to do with its quality. And as the previous poster mentioned, ASN.1 is used a lot, unlike XML itself.
XML's strenth lies on the not-so-tight coupleness of the two parties
What the hell are you talking about? The sender and receiver always have to understand each other.
Read the comment earlier:
ASN.1 parsers are simple and straightforward to implement, fast, their output is architecture independent, and the technology is very stable. Most important, this is a PRESENTATION LAYER protocol, not an APPLICATION LAYER protocol. The semantics of the encoding are left to the XML program.
I am a computer engineer, but I realize that for people without the inclination and time to plow through it, code is a very effective tool for obfuscation. (Even when it is free as in speech.)
There's no subsitute for moderation, that's for sure.