What if the IT guy were setting up a call center full of robots as opposed to Indian people? Would he be so ethically outraged then? Or is this really more about brown people getting white people's jerbs?
Could it in fact be the case that people without degrees are poorer and, for instance, living in more dangerous locales than people with degrees? I'd surely fear death much more if I lived a mile north of where I currently live, and it would be well-warranted. The same could be said in regard to access to healthcare, etc.
They installed a bracket on the shaft to ensure the propeller never drives the wheels, so all the momentum of the propeller is going to be able to do is allow the propeller to continue spinning. It never, ever, drives the wheels.
I believe you are mistaken on this point. According to the official report, the propeller is connected to the wheels via a fixed-gear transmission, so as long as the propeller spins, the wheels spin. However, the fixed-gear part of it does preclude the idea of harvesting the prop's momentum to accelerate the wheels. Most of my objection is that the rules were very vague and a little confused-sounding about all of this.
If it can, in fact, run forever on a steady wind, then you can discount any initially applied or stored energy, and conclude that it is being powered solely by the wind. If it does that while going faster than the wind, then you can conclude that DWFTTW is possible.
The problem is that the experiment is finite. As such, one needs to be very careful about proving that any finite demonstration of faster-than-wind velocity necessarily entails that the vehicle must be able to maintain that state indefinitely.
Although I believe it is theoretically possible, there is a certain whiff of woo about the experimenters. I'm not even saying they didn't achieve their objective--I'm just saying there are a couple of things about the experiment, especially with regard to the stored energy issue, that nearly broke my woo-meter.
Energy shall not be accumulated and later used for propulsion of the yacht or to operate the controls of the yacht.
It seems to me that this would preclude the use of massive windmills (i.e., flywheels), such as the one on the craft. Later, the rules specifically prohibit flywheels:
It is not permissible to use stored energy to propel the yacht or operate its controls. This might includes things like compressed gas, stressed springs, batteries, capacitors and flywheels. This includes energy stored before a run or during a run. No pumps, generators or mechanical devices that are intended in part or whole to provide energy to storage devices are permitted. Stored energy in the form of momentum of the yacht, its wheels or other **normally moving** or flexing parts of the yacht is allowed. These forms of stored energy are inherent in the operation of the yacht and either do not add energy useful for increasing the speed of the yacht or **do so in a trivial way**.
(emphasis mine)
What constitutes a "normally moving" part of the yacht? What constitutes a "trivial" use of stored energy to increase its speed?
Though the result sounds genuinely interesting, I'm not sure the comparison to Gaussian elimination is fair. The summary gives the O(s^3) asymptotic run time of Gaussian elimination for dense matrices, but there are much better alternatives for a sparse matrix, which is what the paper applies to. For example, if your matrix has the sparsity pattern of a planar graph, it has been known for 30 years that you can do Gaussian elimination in O(n^1.5). This result, however, seems to have the potential to be more widely applicable while producing a better asymptotic bound. So, sounds like great work, but not quite as amazing as the hype in the summary.
Extremist Christians blew up a Planned Parenthood in California last month even though it is clearly illegal.
Can anyone corroborate this anecdote? Being naturally skeptical of things I read on the internet, I tried to find this on Google news and the closest thing I found was this story about a Planned Parenthood official who put an egg timer in a trash can and called in a hoax bomb threat. I have a feeling I would have heard about a legitimate terrorist action against an abortion clinic in the US.
Unfortunately, he no longer gives out reward checks for finding bugs in his texts. This seems to be mostly because proud bug-finders inevitably post images of the checks online, which of course, contain Knuth's bank account numbers. More discussion here.
Somehow, I'm not so impressed, considering Moore's Law predicts a roughly 1 million-fold (= 2^(30/2)) increase in transistor count over the span of 30 years...
He's producing FUD while possibly trying to launch an abusive lawsuit based on software patents...
The impression I got from Jobs' message was not at all that Apple intends to sue anyone over Theora. Rather, he seems to be justly concerned about litigation from patent trolls/corporate enemies in case they were to adopt it. c.f. Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft, a legal battle over MP3 that Microsoft has been fighting for the last seven years. Microsoft at one point lost the case and was ordered to fork over $1.5 billion (which was later overturned, but the case is still in limbo, as far as i can tell).
Microsoft more than likely violated the MP3 patents unintentionally, and look at where it got them. If it truly is the case that Jobs is fully aware that Theora is a legal trap, it would be beyond irresponsible for him to step into it.
Moreover, Americans have a great history of accusing presidents of mass murder with no factual basis whatsoever, yet I've never heard of any one of them being arrested for speaking their views.
Once again, calculating Chrome's memory usage is not as simple as summing the memory usage of all its processes, because shared libraries are only loaded once. It's unclear as to whether these benchmarks took this into account. More info here.
The way I understand it, there is actually a bit of controversy over whether Candès or David Donoho "invented" compressed sensing. It seems to me that Donoho was actually first, but Candès ended up getting most of the credit.
Slashdot Mirror
What if the IT guy were setting up a call center full of robots as opposed to Indian people? Would he be so ethically outraged then? Or is this really more about brown people getting white people's jerbs?
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=486790652130&ref=mf
Well, more like the IVHEMT...
I, for one, welcome our new Android PMP overlords.
Could it in fact be the case that people without degrees are poorer and, for instance, living in more dangerous locales than people with degrees? I'd surely fear death much more if I lived a mile north of where I currently live, and it would be well-warranted. The same could be said in regard to access to healthcare, etc.
Came here for the 1984 reference, left satisfied. Thanks, Timothy!
They installed a bracket on the shaft to ensure the propeller never drives the wheels, so all the momentum of the propeller is going to be able to do is allow the propeller to continue spinning. It never, ever, drives the wheels.
I believe you are mistaken on this point. According to the official report, the propeller is connected to the wheels via a fixed-gear transmission, so as long as the propeller spins, the wheels spin. However, the fixed-gear part of it does preclude the idea of harvesting the prop's momentum to accelerate the wheels. Most of my objection is that the rules were very vague and a little confused-sounding about all of this.
If it can, in fact, run forever on a steady wind, then you can discount any initially applied or stored energy, and conclude that it is being powered solely by the wind. If it does that while going faster than the wind, then you can conclude that DWFTTW is possible.
The problem is that the experiment is finite. As such, one needs to be very careful about proving that any finite demonstration of faster-than-wind velocity necessarily entails that the vehicle must be able to maintain that state indefinitely.
Here is what bothers me about this whole thing.
Although I believe it is theoretically possible, there is a certain whiff of woo about the experimenters. I'm not even saying they didn't achieve their objective--I'm just saying there are a couple of things about the experiment, especially with regard to the stored energy issue, that nearly broke my woo-meter.
From the official rules:
Energy shall not be accumulated and later used for propulsion of the yacht or to operate the controls of the yacht.
It seems to me that this would preclude the use of massive windmills (i.e., flywheels), such as the one on the craft. Later, the rules specifically prohibit flywheels:
It is not permissible to use stored energy to propel the yacht or operate its controls. This might includes things like compressed gas, stressed springs, batteries, capacitors and flywheels. This includes energy stored before a run or during a run. No pumps, generators or mechanical devices that are intended in part or whole to provide energy to storage devices are permitted. Stored energy in the form of momentum of the yacht, its wheels or other **normally moving** or flexing parts of the yacht is allowed. These forms of stored energy are inherent in the operation of the yacht and either do not add energy useful for increasing the speed of the yacht or **do so in a trivial way**.
(emphasis mine)
What constitutes a "normally moving" part of the yacht? What constitutes a "trivial" use of stored energy to increase its speed?
Though the result sounds genuinely interesting, I'm not sure the comparison to Gaussian elimination is fair. The summary gives the O(s^3) asymptotic run time of Gaussian elimination for dense matrices, but there are much better alternatives for a sparse matrix, which is what the paper applies to. For example, if your matrix has the sparsity pattern of a planar graph, it has been known for 30 years that you can do Gaussian elimination in O(n^1.5). This result, however, seems to have the potential to be more widely applicable while producing a better asymptotic bound. So, sounds like great work, but not quite as amazing as the hype in the summary.
Extremist Christians blew up a Planned Parenthood in California last month even though it is clearly illegal.
Can anyone corroborate this anecdote? Being naturally skeptical of things I read on the internet, I tried to find this on Google news and the closest thing I found was this story about a Planned Parenthood official who put an egg timer in a trash can and called in a hoax bomb threat. I have a feeling I would have heard about a legitimate terrorist action against an abortion clinic in the US.
... on the dangers of unsanitized user inputs.
I've got a quantum memory in my computer right now, in the sense that flash memory exploits quantum tunneling to flip bits.
He's one of the top three UNIX gurus in the entire world. In fact, the Internet today is what it is thanks to his hard work and dedication.
Still, I'd trust Don Knuth over Poul-Henning any day--at least Knuth can spell his own first name correctly.
...not dead yet, to quote Monty Python.
Unfortunately, he no longer gives out reward checks for finding bugs in his texts. This seems to be mostly because proud bug-finders inevitably post images of the checks online, which of course, contain Knuth's bank account numbers. More discussion here.
Dare I say Reuters has figured it out, with this story image.
Juche juice: made with 100% crackpot, quasi-communist ideology!
Somehow, I'm not so impressed, considering Moore's Law predicts a roughly 1 million-fold (= 2^(30/2)) increase in transistor count over the span of 30 years...
He's producing FUD while possibly trying to launch an abusive lawsuit based on software patents...
The impression I got from Jobs' message was not at all that Apple intends to sue anyone over Theora. Rather, he seems to be justly concerned about litigation from patent trolls/corporate enemies in case they were to adopt it. c.f. Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft, a legal battle over MP3 that Microsoft has been fighting for the last seven years. Microsoft at one point lost the case and was ordered to fork over $1.5 billion (which was later overturned, but the case is still in limbo, as far as i can tell).
Microsoft more than likely violated the MP3 patents unintentionally, and look at where it got them. If it truly is the case that Jobs is fully aware that Theora is a legal trap, it would be beyond irresponsible for him to step into it.
Yes, it's completely legal in the US. For better or worse, the media can legally lie.
Moreover, Americans have a great history of accusing presidents of mass murder with no factual basis whatsoever, yet I've never heard of any one of them being arrested for speaking their views.
Or, someone could hire this midget to imitate him, and post it all over the intertubes. Let's see Chávez portray /that/ as a CIA attack!
Yo soy el pequeño Hugo Chávez. Me encanta el socialismo!
My ISP is Teksavvy (Who're Great)
There is a reason why this particular contraction isn't usually employed. Think about it.
Once again, calculating Chrome's memory usage is not as simple as summing the memory usage of all its processes, because shared libraries are only loaded once. It's unclear as to whether these benchmarks took this into account. More info here.
[The inventor of CS, Emmanuel] Candès...
The way I understand it, there is actually a bit of controversy over whether Candès or David Donoho "invented" compressed sensing. It seems to me that Donoho was actually first, but Candès ended up getting most of the credit.