I wonder what environment the test subjects were in when they measured their brain activity.
I think it is more likely that they were measured in a lab with not much social activity, than at a party. i.e. In an environment where introverts work better.
Perhaps if they were measured in a social environment, the extroverts would do better.
For several years I used Dvorak on my previous laptop, and Qwerty when I was in the lab at University.
It took me a couple of weeks to get up to speed with Dvorak, and another couple of weeks after that to stop myself typing in Dvorak on other computers. But after that, the different feel of the keys on my laptop flipped me into Dvorak mode.
I finally gave up on using Dvorak, because my laptop started dying, and I had to use a full sized keyboard to use it. Because it was full-sized, and didn't have my Dvorak stickers on it, I kept typing in Qwerty, instead of Dvorak.
From what was said there, it sounds like poll workers were looking at voter's screens. Sure it was when the machine was throwing a tantrum, but...
I'm aware that in the electorate my mother lives in (in New Zealand, not US), at the last election several elderly immigrants votes were voided, because they needed their family in the booth with them to translate the ballot forms.
I don't think that not being involved competitively is necessarily the reason here. More like being told you're "too good" is.
I myself am an *extremely* non-confrontational/non-competitive person. Which can be good, and bad. Sometimes I'll accept loss rather than making an issue of something; but on the upside I'll try to work with rather than against people, I don't dislike others, and to my knowledge others don't dislike me.
Learning to accept defeats doesn't necessarily require engaging in competition. It sounds to me like your cousing wasn't just sheltered from competition, but was also sheltered from anything going wrong for him. If you always get what you want, then you'll grow up assuming that you *deserve* to always get what you want.
When my University was showing off its fast long-distance wireless project, to suck students into enrolling, they put a live feed to the monkey cage at the local zoo! Unfortunately it was raining, so the monkeys stayed hidden, and we had a live feed to it raining at the zoo!
If you're doing it in java, I'd suggest using BSF (http://jakarta.apache.org/bsf/) with Rhino. You can plug in scripting engines for different languages. You can register java beans with it, to make parts of the main program available to the scripting environment.
I believe there are a number of islands here in New Zealand where cats are banned. Though those islands mostly don't have many/any people on. Most of our native species are lizards and birds, including some flightless ones that have been hard hit by the introduction of ground based predators. I'm not aware of any species that were made extinct by cats here, but cats certainly make a contribution to the endangerment of many species. On a semi-related note, buying selling and breeding ferrets have been banned in New Zealand, because of the damage they do when they get loose.
The son of a friend of mine was diagnosed with ADHD. She didn't want him taking Ritalin, so she started sending him to school with a thermos of coffee. The hope being that coffee would be able to stimulate the brain as well as Ritalin would.
I assume that either it worked, or she thought it worked.
It's not a matter of chucking the specification at a piece of software and saying 'prove it for me'.
There are points at which you have to help the software along, tell it which strategy to use, or give it a half-way point to prove first.
If the assumptions being tested are provable, then it is valid to make those assumptions. If you can't prove them, then you don't really know that they are correct, and you shouldn't be making them.
Some pieces of code it is possible to prove whether it halts or not.
It is possible to prove that:
while(true);
does not halt.
It is possible to prove that:
for(int i=0;i<10;i++)cout <<i<<endl;
does halt.
Similarly, as you say, there are other facts it is not possible to prove about a system. However if these facts need to be true for your system to be working properly, and they can't be proved, then there is something wrong with the system. e.g. If it is not possible to prove that your hello world program outputs "Hello World!", then it should be rewritten/fixed so that this can be proved. Otherwise the program is faulty, and may not do its job.
Some people here don't seem to understand the usefulness of Z.
When developing software the process might look something like this: ... Specification (created with or by client) Design Implementation Testing ...
Typically a specification could be a great big document written in english. It could have ambiguities, it could have subtle contradictions, it could be missing vital information.
If the specification is written in Z, then there are tools that let you:
- Find ambiguities or contradictions.
- Prove that some fact of the system necessarily follows from some other fact.
- Prove whether assumptions are correct.
- Test what results are possible given certain inputs and sequences of operations.
There are processes for, step by step, turning a specification into something more like real code, while proving that the two forms mean the same thing (apart from whatever limits are introduced). So, for example the transformed specification might change a variable from being an integer to being an integer in the range 0..65535, and you can test what effects this has. All of this can be done before writing a single line of actual program. Yes mistakes are still possible, but if done right, they are significantly less likely; and unlikely to be due to a misunderstanding about the capabilities of some part of the system.
Z can also help in the process of testing an implementation. From the specification you can see that, for example, the number 50 is the input value at which the behaviour of a function significantly changes, so you know to produce test sets checking the input of 50 and values on either side. This doesn't _have_ to be done by hand; my thesis supervisor is part of a project to automatically generate test sets from B and Z specifications.
So creating a Z specification: -mean more work before coding starts (I think this is what makes most people uncomfortable with it:-)= ), -forces you to be very specific about what correct behaviour is, -allows you to test properties of the system before it is created, -can help to make more useful test sets.
(Disclaimer: My Master's thesis involves making tools for Z, so I could be biased; but it also means I probably know more than average about Z).
The intricacies of their plan to screw over the mark are just wonderful; and you only really appreciate how intricate it gets right at the end.
Any movie ending that makes you reconsider whole sections of the rest of the movie is good... The Sting, Usual Suspects, Fight Club (though the ending is the main thing in Fight Club's favour).
I refused to see that movie, because they wrecked the ecology of the place they were filming. Hauled stupid amounts of sand from someplace that's supposed to have sand, and dumped it at their location which wasn't.
The idea of terraforming bugs me. Even though there's nothing living there, I think its an environment worth protecting. If we terraform it, we get another Earth (more or less), but we lose a place that's different, exciting, and interesting. We lose the opportunity of experiencing that Mars.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder what environment the test subjects were in when they measured their brain activity.
I think it is more likely that they were measured in a lab with not much social activity, than at a party.
i.e. In an environment where introverts work better.
Perhaps if they were measured in a social environment, the extroverts would do better.
For several years I used Dvorak on my previous laptop, and Qwerty when I was in the lab at University.
It took me a couple of weeks to get up to speed with Dvorak, and another couple of weeks after that to stop myself typing in Dvorak on other computers. But after that, the different feel of the keys on my laptop flipped me into Dvorak mode.
I finally gave up on using Dvorak, because my laptop started dying, and I had to use a full sized keyboard to use it. Because it was full-sized, and didn't have my Dvorak stickers on it, I kept typing in Qwerty, instead of Dvorak.
From what was said there, it sounds like poll workers were looking at voter's screens. Sure it was when the machine was throwing a tantrum, but ...
I'm aware that in the electorate my mother lives in (in New Zealand, not US), at the last election several elderly immigrants votes were voided, because they needed their family in the booth with them to translate the ballot forms.
I don't think that not being involved competitively is necessarily the reason here. More like being told you're "too good" is.
I myself am an *extremely* non-confrontational/non-competitive person. Which can be good, and bad. Sometimes I'll accept loss rather than making an issue of something; but on the upside I'll try to work with rather than against people, I don't dislike others, and to my knowledge others don't dislike me.
Learning to accept defeats doesn't necessarily require engaging in competition. It sounds to me like your cousing wasn't just sheltered from competition, but was also sheltered from anything going wrong for him. If you always get what you want, then you'll grow up assuming that you *deserve* to always get what you want.
When my University was showing off its fast long-distance wireless project, to suck students into enrolling, they put a live feed to the monkey cage at the local zoo! Unfortunately it was raining, so the monkeys stayed hidden, and we had a live feed to it raining at the zoo!
Disney is with Nike on the list of companies that I won't have anything to do with. But now I'll be able to watch Pixar's new movies. http://www.google.com/search?q=disney+sweatshops
Regular popups wouldn't work either if the advertiser was close enough to visit to "register disapproval".
If you're doing it in java, I'd suggest using BSF (http://jakarta.apache.org/bsf/) with Rhino. You can plug in scripting engines for different languages. You can register java beans with it, to make parts of the main program available to the scripting environment.
Fountain pens are nice, but don't write well on glossy surfaces, or on the signature space on credit cards.
Unfortunately I haven't been able to find the Parker Vector Stainless-steel pencil in New Zealand.
How many people are going to run what they think is a fake Microsoft patch?
I guess a speedy commute isn't worth enough to actually car-pool.
I believe there are a number of islands here in New Zealand where cats are banned. Though those islands mostly don't have many/any people on. Most of our native species are lizards and birds, including some flightless ones that have been hard hit by the introduction of ground based predators. I'm not aware of any species that were made extinct by cats here, but cats certainly make a contribution to the endangerment of many species. On a semi-related note, buying selling and breeding ferrets have been banned in New Zealand, because of the damage they do when they get loose.
The son of a friend of mine was diagnosed with ADHD. She didn't want him taking Ritalin, so she started sending him to school with a thermos of coffee. The hope being that coffee would be able to stimulate the brain as well as Ritalin would.
I assume that either it worked, or she thought it worked.
I assume this is supposed to be an 'Ask Slashdot' story.
There are points at which you have to help the software along, tell it which strategy to use, or give it a half-way point to prove first.
If the assumptions being tested are provable, then it is valid to make those assumptions. If you can't prove them, then you don't really know that they are correct, and you shouldn't be making them.
Some pieces of code it is possible to prove whether it halts or not. It is possible to prove that:
while(true);
does not halt.
It is possible to prove that:
for(int i=0;i<10;i++)cout <<i<<endl;
does halt.
Similarly, as you say, there are other facts it is not possible to prove about a system. However if these facts need to be true for your system to be working properly, and they can't be proved, then there is something wrong with the system. e.g. If it is not possible to prove that your hello world program outputs "Hello World!", then it should be rewritten/fixed so that this can be proved. Otherwise the program is faulty, and may not do its job.
Some people here don't seem to understand the usefulness of Z.
...
...
:-)= ),
When developing software the process might look something like this:
Specification (created with or by client)
Design
Implementation
Testing
Typically a specification could be a great big document written in english. It could have ambiguities, it could have subtle contradictions, it could be missing vital information.
If the specification is written in Z, then there are tools that let you:
- Find ambiguities or contradictions.
- Prove that some fact of the system necessarily follows from some other fact.
- Prove whether assumptions are correct.
- Test what results are possible given certain inputs and sequences of operations.
There are processes for, step by step, turning a specification into something more like real code, while proving that the two forms mean the same thing (apart from whatever limits are introduced). So, for example the transformed specification might change a variable from being an integer to being an integer in the range 0..65535, and you can test what effects this has.
All of this can be done before writing a single line of actual program.
Yes mistakes are still possible, but if done right, they are significantly less likely; and unlikely to be due to a misunderstanding about the capabilities of some part of the system.
Z can also help in the process of testing an implementation. From the specification you can see that, for example, the number 50 is the input value at which the behaviour of a function significantly changes, so you know to produce test sets checking the input of 50 and values on either side. This doesn't _have_ to be done by hand; my thesis supervisor is part of a project to automatically generate test sets from B and Z specifications.
So creating a Z specification:
-mean more work before coding starts (I think this is what makes most people uncomfortable with it
-forces you to be very specific about what correct behaviour is,
-allows you to test properties of the system before it is created,
-can help to make more useful test sets.
(Disclaimer: My Master's thesis involves making tools for Z, so I could be biased; but it also means I probably know more than average about Z).
Good lord, no! I have as little to do with cars as possible.
Of course, I also avoid caffeine, don't play computer games, and wear button up shirts.
In Terry Pratchett's Science of the Discworld II, I believe it mentions the similarity, and says that humans belong in the Pans genus with the chimps.
(any errors above are due to failures in my memory).
That's why I intend to go into academia...
So I can make money off the people expanding their skill set.
The intricacies of their plan to screw over the mark are just wonderful; and you only really appreciate how intricate it gets right at the end.
Any movie ending that makes you reconsider whole sections of the rest of the movie is good... The Sting, Usual Suspects, Fight Club (though the ending is the main thing in Fight Club's favour).
I refused to see that movie, because they wrecked the ecology of the place they were filming. Hauled stupid amounts of sand from someplace that's supposed to have sand, and dumped it at their location which wasn't.
Oh, and Leo put me off watching it too.
There was that one time my program kept killing people, singing something about Daisy and bicycles... :-)=
Tell people you're Canadian. :-)=
--
Shoosh...
Consumers aren't supposed to have memories that long.
The idea of terraforming bugs me.
Even though there's nothing living there, I think its an environment worth protecting.
If we terraform it, we get another Earth (more or less), but we lose a place that's different, exciting, and interesting. We lose the opportunity of experiencing that Mars.