It's mostly used as a counterargument to the apologist claim that the bible contains math secrets that weren't known when it was written (which is absurd on the face of it, in both directions, of course).
However, that said, just to play the Devil's Advocate (seeing as how the devil is the most likely character in the Bible story to have inspired its writers to create such a libelous depiction of the main character)...
An even better guess than crude "rounding" is that it already says the right thing if you read it correctly. 10 cubits from from "brim to brim" might easily mean the outside diameter of the container, and the circumference may reasonably be considered to be encompassing the *sea* contained therein (i.e. the inside circumference).
As the thickness is a "handsbreadth", which in Egyptian measure was ~.2 cubits. Twice that is.4 cubits, so the diameter of the encompassed sea would be 9.6 cubits, which, when multiplied by pi implies a circumference of 30.16 cubits. This is well within any reasonable margin of error.
To be fair, a large number of laws exist because of corporations and individuals attempting to find loopholes around the "simple" laws.
Humans are evolved to find loopholes. It's what we do. If you're going to try to have well-defined rules we're all supposed to follow, they're either going to be worse than useless or they're going to be complex.
The only alternative is to have a judicial system with judges that have *way* more power to simply decide what is reasonable and apply the simple laws how the judge sees fit. We do have that to a fairly large degree, which is the only reason our laws get away with being even as minimally simple as they are. The worry is that moving too far in that direction removes valuable checks and balances.
Instead of anecdotal evidence, how about if one of these studies actually studies the problem in situ to *see* if people behave differently between drinking and texting/calling/talking to a passenger while driving?
Until then, it's pretty much meaningless noise.
It's pretty easy to disprove this hypothesis, though. If you look at the causes of fatal accidents, you'd find that it's quite rare for an accident to be linked to texting or calling, *relative* to being related to drinking.
If we see 10,000 deaths per year attributable to texting/calling *then* we can say that these activities are "just as dangerous". Until then, it's little more than speculation and hyperbole.
But speaking of anecdotal evidence, I see a *lot* more people driving while calling than driving while drunk (to the degree necessary to show an evident impairment in both cases, just to compare apples to apples). Yet alcohol related injuries and deaths are far more common.
Something doesn't add up. I don't know what it is, but it doesn't add up.
I suppose that an exclusive license with the right to sublicense would be right out then, too? Because the difference that makes no difference is no difference.
The purpose of patents is not to allow people to productize their own ideas, it's to incentivize people to a) invent, and b) not try to hide their invention so that it becomes available to all, eventually.
One way to incentivize inventors is to allow them to sell their patents.
Surely you don't think the order that results are returned when you do a map search is purely based on popularity, do you? Or something obvious... like being in the map area you're viewing...?
The fact that Google's ads are *subtle* is a keystone of their business model.
Not complaining about your point, but just a nit pick:
If your data actually grows exponentially, it probably matters very little what O your algorithm is (unless it's O(1), of course:-), because even a linear algorithm will take exponentially longer with exponential data. Naturally, higher orders will break faster, and that might save you for a very little while. But if you're planning for exponential data growth, you need an entirely different paradigm.
Wouldn't change anything, so why bother? Big media would just enter into contracts with the artists that had exactly the same effect, by requiring them to use/enforce "their" copyright as directed by big media.
Just one point. Violating "patent law" isn't a criminal offense, it's a civil tort (IANAL, but deal with patents a lot). The government can't come get you and throw you in jail for that one (to any greater degree than they can, of course, do it without any reason whatsoever).
I suspect it's largely because they don't want to incentivize people to buy tickets to the cheap movie, and sneak into the more expensive one (or spend the money to implement security procedures that would limit that to a minimum).
Perhaps this is a naive view, but if matter and antimatter *did* exist in similar quantities, wouldn't they *have* to "chunk"?
If it didn't, significant quantities of it would annihilate at the boundary, creating an outward force that would tend to keep the two apart, would they not?
Now, I don't see any reason why there wouldn't still be interactions, and consequently why we wouldn't see the proper gamma rays, so it seems unlikely that that much antimatter does exist, but...
Actually, I think the people that are thinking about these climate engineering approaches are just more pessimistic (or realistic, depending on your viewpoint). They simply don't think there's any chance at all that we will be able to convince people to stop emitting greenhouse gasses in time to make a difference.
Once you have that viewpoint, then climate engineering becomes the strategy of "do something rather than nothing".
That problem already exists in spades with absentee ballots, and few people are complaining about that. In practice this seems like a marginal problem to worry about, and even if it weren't it could be resolved by having a personal repudiation code that could be entered if your vote was being coerced.
Ummm... can I just say that having a random website generate your passwords, even if there are "thousands" of possible options on the card, might not be the smartest security approach?
Now, if you download the source code, check the algorithm carefully for real randomness (preferably by having a crypto expert look at it), and generate it yourself on your own computer, it's *probably* pretty safe.
The difference is that they only have to do that with the products that they inventory and sell. Amazon, if it had to collect sales tax on all purchases, would have to do this for the thousands of companies selling through it (as it is the one placing the order and collecting the money). The liability of ensuring that the proper sales tax was specified by all of their sellers is likely a significant consideration.
Of course, the biggest reason is they want to keep their price advantage, but don't discount their other concerns.
What, exactly, about the unremitting string of states Amazon has cut off from their affiliate program for passing dumb laws like this, makes anyone in the legislature think that this will add a single red cent to the state budget? Oh, California's "too big"? Ask New York how that argument worked for them.
Constitutional issues aside, this does nothing but decrease the revenue of California Amazon affiliate businesses, resulting in lower tax revenues.
Slashdot Mirror
However, that said, just to play the Devil's Advocate (seeing as how the devil is the most likely character in the Bible story to have inspired its writers to create such a libelous depiction of the main character)...
An even better guess than crude "rounding" is that it already says the right thing if you read it correctly. 10 cubits from from "brim to brim" might easily mean the outside diameter of the container, and the circumference may reasonably be considered to be encompassing the *sea* contained therein (i.e. the inside circumference).
As the thickness is a "handsbreadth", which in Egyptian measure was ~.2 cubits. Twice that is .4 cubits, so the diameter of the encompassed sea would be 9.6 cubits, which, when multiplied by pi implies a circumference of 30.16 cubits. This is well within any reasonable margin of error.
Humans are evolved to find loopholes. It's what we do. If you're going to try to have well-defined rules we're all supposed to follow, they're either going to be worse than useless or they're going to be complex.
The only alternative is to have a judicial system with judges that have *way* more power to simply decide what is reasonable and apply the simple laws how the judge sees fit. We do have that to a fairly large degree, which is the only reason our laws get away with being even as minimally simple as they are. The worry is that moving too far in that direction removes valuable checks and balances.
So it is entirely possible for a guilty person to get the punishment they deserve, because they're being threatened with more than they deserve.
The real problem is that there's no way to know how often this happens.
Until then, it's pretty much meaningless noise.
It's pretty easy to disprove this hypothesis, though. If you look at the causes of fatal accidents, you'd find that it's quite rare for an accident to be linked to texting or calling, *relative* to being related to drinking.
If we see 10,000 deaths per year attributable to texting/calling *then* we can say that these activities are "just as dangerous". Until then, it's little more than speculation and hyperbole.
But speaking of anecdotal evidence, I see a *lot* more people driving while calling than driving while drunk (to the degree necessary to show an evident impairment in both cases, just to compare apples to apples). Yet alcohol related injuries and deaths are far more common.
Something doesn't add up. I don't know what it is, but it doesn't add up.
The purpose of patents is not to allow people to productize their own ideas, it's to incentivize people to a) invent, and b) not try to hide their invention so that it becomes available to all, eventually.
One way to incentivize inventors is to allow them to sell their patents.
The fact that Google's ads are *subtle* is a keystone of their business model.
That book is almost tailor made to kill terrorists by giving them dangerous recipes, rather than to actually enable them.
Are you sure you want to add tampering with evidence to whatever charge they previously wanted to make?
Fanatics are always the early adopters in everything.
If your data actually grows exponentially, it probably matters very little what O your algorithm is (unless it's O(1), of course :-), because even a linear algorithm will take exponentially longer with exponential data. Naturally, higher orders will break faster, and that might save you for a very little while. But if you're planning for exponential data growth, you need an entirely different paradigm.
Wouldn't change anything, so why bother? Big media would just enter into contracts with the artists that had exactly the same effect, by requiring them to use/enforce "their" copyright as directed by big media.
Just one point. Violating "patent law" isn't a criminal offense, it's a civil tort (IANAL, but deal with patents a lot). The government can't come get you and throw you in jail for that one (to any greater degree than they can, of course, do it without any reason whatsoever).
I suspect it's largely because they don't want to incentivize people to buy tickets to the cheap movie, and sneak into the more expensive one (or spend the money to implement security procedures that would limit that to a minimum).
You're just complaining that they're too expensive and difficult to use.
If it didn't, significant quantities of it would annihilate at the boundary, creating an outward force that would tend to keep the two apart, would they not?
Now, I don't see any reason why there wouldn't still be interactions, and consequently why we wouldn't see the proper gamma rays, so it seems unlikely that that much antimatter does exist, but...
Once you have that viewpoint, then climate engineering becomes the strategy of "do something rather than nothing".
Point 1: Supreme Court Justices can be impeached the same was as presidents.
Point 2: "Treason" has a very specific definition in the Constitution that doesn't include making bad decisions.
That problem already exists in spades with absentee ballots, and few people are complaining about that. In practice this seems like a marginal problem to worry about, and even if it weren't it could be resolved by having a personal repudiation code that could be entered if your vote was being coerced.
What could possibly go wrong with programming T-cells to multiply by a factor of 1000 upon reentering your body?
Now, if you download the source code, check the algorithm carefully for real randomness (preferably by having a crypto expert look at it), and generate it yourself on your own computer, it's *probably* pretty safe.
Other than being a pyramid scheme, you mean?
The difference is that they only have to do that with the products that they inventory and sell. Amazon, if it had to collect sales tax on all purchases, would have to do this for the thousands of companies selling through it (as it is the one placing the order and collecting the money). The liability of ensuring that the proper sales tax was specified by all of their sellers is likely a significant consideration. Of course, the biggest reason is they want to keep their price advantage, but don't discount their other concerns.
Constitutional issues aside, this does nothing but decrease the revenue of California Amazon affiliate businesses, resulting in lower tax revenues.
Volume discount.
He said an *operating system*.