No offense, but understanding a general nuance of a law and commenting on something like say, DMCA, doesn't require as much effort as would, say, a paper on graphics that talks about surface rendering using scattered data sets.
Thats because the amount of basic background knowledge required to comment on something like a legal viewpoint, or express an opinion on DMCA isn't as much as it would be when it comes to talking about the Poincaré Conjecture or Finite Automata Theory:-)
Besides, a legal viewpoint is more of a personal expression - it might just affect you tomorrow, but Spintronic Devices aren't really gonna affect any of us tomorrow, contrary to whatever you may want to believe.
Now, can someone tell me what practical applications there might be of this? Or is it strictly an abstract concept?
Hmmm, a lot of work in mathematics may not have immediate applications or uses. But down the line, they just might get used.
As many posters have already mentioned, Boolean algebra is one such case, and another example would be the work done by Fourier - particularly his integral transforms and series.
I mean, today these are used so much in DSP and the like, I doubt Fourier had these in mind when he worked it out in the early 1800s:-)
Although a lot of pure mathematicians may take pride in the fact that their work might just never get used, one can never be so sure;-)
Feels funny to be replying to my own post, but I just wanted to add an odd point abt the.Net contest. I guess Microsoft has different levels for various countries I guess. So probably you ppl had to code after the initial level.
Because here we were South Zone Runners up, while I think 2 other teams qualified for the All India finals, the winner of which would compete for the Asia-Pac title, and would goto Barcelona.
When I took part, it was like this - a quizz like session, software architecture and design, presentation, actual coding and decisions.
Dunno how it is now. I don't think it would be the same everywhere.
This is not the first time that this is happening.
When I had taken part in the Microsoft.Net contest last year, they had sent us copies of Windows XP, MS.Net Beta-2, MS SQL 2000 and a few other softwares - just the discs with no license agreement.
Ok, maybe the MS-SQL came with a cover where there was something that resembled a license that was written at the back, but all the other CDs were just bundled and couriered to us in plain white covers.
Now, we were not sure what we should do, since our school rules clearly prohibited us from installing softwares without licenses before obtaining the Dean's permission. He gave us the finger, and told us to do it on our own PCs, and which is what we had to do.
Kinda stupid when this happens, and this is not the first time either. The funniest thing was that when we asked the guys at Microsoft, they acted like nothing was wrong.
But there is one feature that would be useful - if I can get a way to search for things without anyone keeping a log of what I searched for.
As an example, many a time have I had to search for crucial information, say patents, and have uses delphion or uspto. Now, I tend to be as tangential and as innocous while I search, so that I don't ever provide a clear-cut picture of what I search for.
Why? Because I'm very sure that these sites are monitored to look for relevant research information. Simple.
Now, this is just an example. I can cite thousands of instances where I've wished that my searches were anonymous, especially when it comes to cutting edge research work, where you have the nudge factor - the slightest disclosure would result in others knowing what you're upto, and that would make you lose all your advantage.
If anyone - Google or Microsoft - can provide that kind of anonymity or let you create an account with clear-cut security where my searches aren't disclosed, even if it means I have to pay, I know so many people who'd buy it up.
Ofcourse, this involves so much of legalese and all that crap, but if they could, it would be really cool.
Although I've not read the paper, I do not think this is a puritarian proof. From the site -
So Goldston picked off a more manageable piece of the problem: Can you always find prime numbers that may not be twins, but that are much closer together than average? Taking into account, of course, the fact that the bigger numbers get, the sparser primes become.
Sounds more like its a proof through mathematical induction than anything else.
I don't see any difference between a "law" and a "theorem
The reason the term law is not used is because a law is something that has to always hold true.
On the other hand, a Theorem is something that is based on a set of axioms. It may change, within the limitations of the axioms or even independent of them.
From a Physicist's perspective, both Newtonian mechanics and Relativistic mechanics hold true, but you do not consider relativistic mechanics for your day-to-day problems in Physics. Which is why a law holds true, immaterial of other implications, although something may supercede it, its validity is not lost.
On the other hand, a theorem is built more on an observation, as a function of such laws.
The laws of mathematics are the axioms. The theorems are just built on them.
Track how full your hard drive is, traffic on your website, Slashdot posts, or your credit-card debt.
Right. Now if I gave you $200, would you be kinda enough to hum a few sample Slashdot posts? I would appreciate it it you would start from a threshold of -1. Now *that* is something I'd pay for!:-p
Gee, a glowing ball that tell you about Slashdot posts? How very interesting:-p
But if you reckon they were worth it, I may go back and give them a go. What does everyone else think?
Spoiler Warning!
After Dune, just about everything is depressing. God Emperor of Dune was weird enough, but wait until you come to Heretics of Dune.
Herbert builds up a belief system, where he just shows everything that you knew and respected fade away. And things that you loved to despise, or did not quite like of, like say the BG, turn out to be almost the nice guys!
And then you will realize why Leto-II was good to the BG in the God Emperor series! He knew that the BG had a much much bigger role to play.
Now Dune:Chapterhouse. Thats another very very weird book. Its almost like telling you, everything you knew, or thought that you knew, is false. And you hardly got to see the tip of the iceberg.
He leaves it on a very weird note - either he was planning to write more or did not want to, or knew that he'd not live to write more. Coming to Marty and Daniel, read this article. The ending of the Dune series is just as weird as the ending to Asimov's foundation - just about anything could happen, and you're left with infinite possibilities, and infinite questions:-)
So on the whole, the whole series has a little sad note, and a very weird feeling, but you come away satisfied, although with lots of questions!
Now my question is, what really happened to Ix? Because in House Atreides by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson, he discusses some very weird things about the Atreides and the Ix houses, and some weird characters and the like. Any ideas? I would also like to read more about the Butlerian Jihad, guess Brian is writing a book on that?
Because they behave just like how every other big multinational corporation would? Look at HP. Look at Enron. Look at Worldcom. Compare them with Microsoft. Each and every one of them has done much the same deeds as Microsoft, and have been responsible for the demise of smaller companies as well as people losing their jobs.
Hell, they know what they're up against in the industry and produce workarounds. Just because you disagree with them hardly makes them immoral, my friend.
As if Netscape would have donated all their profits and all their wealth to the world so that people live happily ever after? For all you know they would have done much the same thing. Get over it, its competition. Its got nothing to do with whats right or whats wrong. Its business.
Hell, if Microsoft is gonna make billions and if even a significant percentage of that money goes towards charity, I say more power to them. Look at half the people running multinational corps across the world. How much do they spend against fighting AIDS, Cancer or poverty? Just look at how much the "much hated" Gates has donated, and has designated for donation. Go ahead, compare.
See, Microsoft may have been a company that has done a few questionable deeds, but that's just a part of business. Pfizer sells life saving drugs at ridiculous prices in the poorest parts of the world, without even spending a fraction of the costs in manufacturing them. Don't give me that crap about R&D, look at the annual figures - a fraction of the profits are spent on R&D. A company that makes 8 Billion a quarter spends 1/8th of it on R&D. Its not software that we're talking about here, its LIFE!
Software, technology etc are all nice and cool, but calling working for a company whose principles you disagree with immoral is ridiculous.
Something I choose to do? I would much rather work for a company like Microsoft, make lots of money and spend it on charity than work on Opensource software getting paid next to nothing and live a life of hypocrisy believing that some mere lines of code are somehow miraculously going to change this world.
I would much rather have a "non-hard life", earn, live happily and use that money to adopt a few kids whose lives I will change.
Yes, I like Opensource. It is a tool, a movement. Nothing more. But taking it to preposterous degrees and dubbing everything else immoral, unethical and the like is outright stupid.
I did not mean to offend you, but sometimes this almost fanatical attitude by a lot of Opensource evangelists is what disgusts me.
Re:You can sign up for the mailing list here:
on
IETF to Look at Spam
·
· Score: 1
A piece of warning that I have adhered to from a few members of the list - it sees about 200 messages and odd a day, and I guess you join only if you really know what you're doing.
Another thing is that the list is supposed to be populated by discussions surrouding a lot of filtering techniques, which really aren't the way around spam.
I feel that if you propose to truly eliminate spam, a protocol level change is what would be needed.
Slashdot Mirror
The URL for their demo video is here -http://www.versalaser.com/english/techtv.wmv
It is kinda slowing down, right now am getting about 20kbps.
How about helping with some cool math prime search?
ars Team Prime Rib - cool prime searching stuff.
A mix of misc science stuff.
dc projects - some Opensource, some not.
And all projects at distributed.net come with source too.
No offense, but understanding a general nuance of a law and commenting on something like say, DMCA, doesn't require as much effort as would, say, a paper on graphics that talks about surface rendering using scattered data sets.
:-)
Thats because the amount of basic background knowledge required to comment on something like a legal viewpoint, or express an opinion on DMCA isn't as much as it would be when it comes to talking about the Poincaré Conjecture or Finite Automata Theory
Besides, a legal viewpoint is more of a personal expression - it might just affect you tomorrow, but Spintronic Devices aren't really gonna affect any of us tomorrow, contrary to whatever you may want to believe.
I guess its more of a social thing.
Hey Bunnie,
;-)
Is there a chance that if published by a third party, say one outside the US, you might get legal immunity?
I guess the advantage of a third party is possibly muscle to handle any legal problems that might crop up.
I mean, if you can even get a publisher who'll sell it outside US, I really don't think a lot of people would mind that either
Now, can someone tell me what practical applications there might be of this? Or is it strictly an abstract concept?
:-)
;-)
Hmmm, a lot of work in mathematics may not have immediate applications or uses. But down the line, they just might get used.
As many posters have already mentioned, Boolean algebra is one such case, and another example would be the work done by Fourier - particularly his integral transforms and series.
I mean, today these are used so much in DSP and the like, I doubt Fourier had these in mind when he worked it out in the early 1800s
Although a lot of pure mathematicians may take pride in the fact that their work might just never get used, one can never be so sure
But.. but the list includes Bill Gates too!
:-p
What do I make of that?!
You mean, like this?
Righttt...
:-p
And just how is that not dangerous?
Feels funny to be replying to my own post, but I just wanted to add an odd point abt the .Net contest. I guess Microsoft has different levels for various countries I guess. So probably you ppl had to code after the initial level.
Because here we were South Zone Runners up, while I think 2 other teams qualified for the All India finals, the winner of which would compete for the Asia-Pac title, and would goto Barcelona.
When I took part, it was like this - a quizz like session, software architecture and design, presentation, actual coding and decisions.
Dunno how it is now. I don't think it would be the same everywhere.
Well, you don't need to be coding to qualify for the next level after they give you the CDs - you just need to draft up an architecture, right? :-p
Anyway, I just asked because one of the guys who's going this time, Kapil (the guy in the middle), is a good friend of mine from high-school.
Oh well!!! Good luck, for the next time.
Hey saw your profile, are you part of the team thats going to Barcelona this time?
This is not the first time that this is happening.
.Net contest last year, they had sent us copies of Windows XP, MS .Net Beta-2, MS SQL 2000 and a few other softwares - just the discs with no license agreement.
When I had taken part in the Microsoft
Ok, maybe the MS-SQL came with a cover where there was something that resembled a license that was written at the back, but all the other CDs were just bundled and couriered to us in plain white covers.
Now, we were not sure what we should do, since our school rules clearly prohibited us from installing softwares without licenses before obtaining the Dean's permission. He gave us the finger, and told us to do it on our own PCs, and which is what we had to do.
Kinda stupid when this happens, and this is not the first time either. The funniest thing was that when we asked the guys at Microsoft, they acted like nothing was wrong.
Wouldn't change a jackshit.
:-p
People like her remind me of this cartoon.
But there is one feature that would be useful - if I can get a way to search for things without anyone keeping a log of what I searched for.
As an example, many a time have I had to search for crucial information, say patents, and have uses delphion or uspto. Now, I tend to be as tangential and as innocous while I search, so that I don't ever provide a clear-cut picture of what I search for.
Why? Because I'm very sure that these sites are monitored to look for relevant research information. Simple.
Now, this is just an example. I can cite thousands of instances where I've wished that my searches were anonymous, especially when it comes to cutting edge research work, where you have the nudge factor - the slightest disclosure would result in others knowing what you're upto, and that would make you lose all your advantage.
If anyone - Google or Microsoft - can provide that kind of anonymity or let you create an account with clear-cut security where my searches aren't disclosed, even if it means I have to pay, I know so many people who'd buy it up.
Ofcourse, this involves so much of legalese and all that crap, but if they could, it would be really cool.
Just a thought.
It takes guts, man! ;-)
Although I've not read the paper, I do not think this is a puritarian proof. From the site -
So Goldston picked off a more manageable piece of the problem: Can you always find prime numbers that may not be twins, but that are much closer together than average? Taking into account, of course, the fact that the bigger numbers get, the sparser primes become.
Sounds more like its a proof through mathematical induction than anything else.
I don't see any difference between a "law" and a "theorem
The reason the term law is not used is because a law is something that has to always hold true.
On the other hand, a Theorem is something that is based on a set of axioms. It may change, within the limitations of the axioms or even independent of them.
From a Physicist's perspective, both Newtonian mechanics and Relativistic mechanics hold true, but you do not consider relativistic mechanics for your day-to-day problems in Physics. Which is why a law holds true, immaterial of other implications, although something may supercede it, its validity is not lost.
On the other hand, a theorem is built more on an observation, as a function of such laws.
The laws of mathematics are the axioms. The theorems are just built on them.
Adds a whole new meaning to the question, "How would you like your eggs?"
Track how full your hard drive is, traffic on your website, Slashdot posts, or your credit-card debt.
:-p
:-p
Right. Now if I gave you $200, would you be kinda enough to hum a few sample Slashdot posts? I would appreciate it it you would start from a threshold of -1. Now *that* is something I'd pay for!
Gee, a glowing ball that tell you about Slashdot posts? How very interesting
But if you reckon they were worth it, I may go back and give them a go. What does everyone else think?
:-)
Spoiler Warning!
After Dune, just about everything is depressing. God Emperor of Dune was weird enough, but wait until you come to Heretics of Dune.
Herbert builds up a belief system, where he just shows everything that you knew and respected fade away. And things that you loved to despise, or did not quite like of, like say the BG, turn out to be almost the nice guys!
And then you will realize why Leto-II was good to the BG in the God Emperor series! He knew that the BG had a much much bigger role to play.
Now Dune:Chapterhouse. Thats another very very weird book. Its almost like telling you, everything you knew, or thought that you knew, is false. And you hardly got to see the tip of the iceberg.
He leaves it on a very weird note - either he was planning to write more or did not want to, or knew that he'd not live to write more. Coming to Marty and Daniel, read this article. The ending of the Dune series is just as weird as the ending to Asimov's foundation - just about anything could happen, and you're left with infinite possibilities, and infinite questions
So on the whole, the whole series has a little sad note, and a very weird feeling, but you come away satisfied, although with lots of questions!
Now my question is, what really happened to Ix? Because in House Atreides by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson, he discusses some very weird things about the Atreides and the Ix houses, and some weird characters and the like. Any ideas? I would also like to read more about the Butlerian Jihad, guess Brian is writing a book on that?
A non-animated PDF version here.
:-)
Link is valid for 7 days
And just how is working for Microsoft immoral?
Because they behave just like how every other big multinational corporation would? Look at HP. Look at Enron. Look at Worldcom. Compare them with Microsoft. Each and every one of them has done much the same deeds as Microsoft, and have been responsible for the demise of smaller companies as well as people losing their jobs.
Hell, they know what they're up against in the industry and produce workarounds. Just because you disagree with them hardly makes them immoral, my friend.
As if Netscape would have donated all their profits and all their wealth to the world so that people live happily ever after? For all you know they would have done much the same thing. Get over it, its competition. Its got nothing to do with whats right or whats wrong. Its business.
Hell, if Microsoft is gonna make billions and if even a significant percentage of that money goes towards charity, I say more power to them. Look at half the people running multinational corps across the world. How much do they spend against fighting AIDS, Cancer or poverty? Just look at how much the "much hated" Gates has donated, and has designated for donation. Go ahead, compare.
See, Microsoft may have been a company that has done a few questionable deeds, but that's just a part of business. Pfizer sells life saving drugs at ridiculous prices in the poorest parts of the world, without even spending a fraction of the costs in manufacturing them. Don't give me that crap about R&D, look at the annual figures - a fraction of the profits are spent on R&D. A company that makes 8 Billion a quarter spends 1/8th of it on R&D. Its not software that we're talking about here, its LIFE!
Software, technology etc are all nice and cool, but calling working for a company whose principles you disagree with immoral is ridiculous.
Something I choose to do? I would much rather work for a company like Microsoft, make lots of money and spend it on charity than work on Opensource software getting paid next to nothing and live a life of hypocrisy believing that some mere lines of code are somehow miraculously going to change this world.
I would much rather have a "non-hard life", earn, live happily and use that money to adopt a few kids whose lives I will change.
Yes, I like Opensource. It is a tool, a movement. Nothing more. But taking it to preposterous degrees and dubbing everything else immoral, unethical and the like is outright stupid.
I did not mean to offend you, but sometimes this almost fanatical attitude by a lot of Opensource evangelists is what disgusts me.
A piece of warning that I have adhered to from a few members of the list - it sees about 200 messages and odd a day, and I guess you join only if you really know what you're doing.
Another thing is that the list is supposed to be populated by discussions surrouding a lot of filtering techniques, which really aren't the way around spam.
I feel that if you propose to truly eliminate spam, a protocol level change is what would be needed.
My 0.02.
On a related note, here's an interesting proposal written by cygnusx which I believe has been/will be submitted to the IETF.
For some odd reason, my name features there too