A knights tour involves moving the knight onto every square of the chessboard without repeating a square (being a knight, it is of course allowed to jump over squares it has previously landed on).
A magic square is a square grid, with each grid position numbered, such that the horizontals, verticals, and diagonals all add to the same number (you can also ask for all the broken diagonals to add to this number, but this doesn't have to hold in a basic magic square).
If we number the knight's initial position 1, and increment with every jump, then a knights tour gives us a numbered n by n square (8 by 8 in the case of a normal chessboard).
The question: are there any knights tours which give us a magic square after we perform this numbering operation?
The answer: no, although there are many tours which give us a 'semi-magic' square (where the horizonals and verticals, but not the diagonals, give us the same sum).
The point: although magic squares have a variety of surprising uses, there seems to be no 'point' to the magic knights tour question other than another line in the book of 'solved minor problems' -- but if it's enough to write a paper on, then you can bet you'll be able to find a graduate student to do it:).
You're a little incoherent, and you've also got the wrong end of my stick, but it's probably early where you live, so I'll explain in easier words.
This is not the same as 'yet another KDE story', or 'yet another kernel release story'.
The entire worth of SCO is now dependent on publicity. Every time we talk about them when we have nothing new to talk about, all we are doing is raising their profile. This is a bad idea.
SCO has filed their suit. IBM has filed their counter-suit. Until something else significant happens, we should just deny SCO the free advertising space we're giving them. We're making them seem more important than they are.
Book piracy has been around for hundreds of years.
In the 16th and 17th century actors and stenographers would conspire to rush off unlicenced copies of popular plays. The most famous example of this is the 'Bad Quarto' of Hamlet. This appeared in print several years before the authorised edition, and was based on the memory of two or three of the principal actors, with much filling from other popular works.
In the 19th century the USA was the piracy centre of the English speaking world -- bootleg editions of every popular British work would be printed, with no money getting back to the original British writers. You can read many complaints from English authors of the time about this situation.
Even if we restrict ourselves to illegal distribution through the internet, this is not a new phenomenon. The alt.binaries.ebook newsgroup has been around for many years -- the only thing which has changed is the mass availabilty of scanners which would have cost thousands only ten years ago. So, instead of having to manually type a book to copy it, we can now scan and OCR.
Just as with music distribution, we need to emphasise that there is an incredible amount of *legal* book distribution on the internet. The standard bearer is Project Gutenberg -- creating free electronic copies of out of copyright texts since 1971.
Freenet links are only immune to the Slashdot effect to the extent that, due to the nature of the system, *every* Freenet link feels Slashdotted, no matter how popular it is.
He's probably a designer in the 1970s mould -- those who gifted my home town (Birmingham, in the UK) with innumerable pustules of architecture in 'hunt the entrance' concrete form.
Wow -- reading that thread gave me a serious headache. The poor guy is making his source code available, and doing far more than 99% of people would ever do (by offering to send it to people on CD if they don't want to download it), and the Debian weenies are *still* bitching at him.
The parent comment was written before my first coffee of the morning. You can tell this because the first clause of the second sentence is utter nonsense, and should be: It's now the main route through which books go to get into PG. Apologies.
And might I also mention that if you want to get involved in helping PG, we have a wonderful Distributed Proofreading project. It's now the main route through which books go to get only DP, and we're almost up to 1500 books processed. Anyone can join -- we need all the proofreaders we can get!
Then, when they understand the concepts, you can introduce them to the syntactic nightmare that is Java.
Re:BitTorrent = SHIT and still not legal anyway
on
ClusterKnoppix
·
· Score: 0, Troll
You know BitTorrent's not an illegal file sharing tool, but anyway -- if you think 2k down / 25k up's bad, you've obviously never used eDonkey/eMule! When you're trying to download something, and the lowest queue position you're in is 400, you'll learn to appreciate BitTorrent.
See the horrendous terms and conditions of the Oxford Text Archive for an example of a 'free' book archive which isn't really free at all.
If we can take their page images, and process them into a Project Gutenberg text through the Distributed Proofreading site, *then* it will be of benefit to humanity.
Yeah, I used to work somewhere which had very draconian password requirements (changed every 30 days, nothing you've had before, nothing too short, can't just contain letters, can't just be a word with 0's for o's and 3's for e's, etc.). Amusingly, 'qq1122qq' was a perfectly valid password. So I started with that, and every month moved one character to the right.
No, qq1122qq is not the password to my Slashdot account:).
Slashdot Mirror
A knights tour involves moving the knight onto every square of the chessboard without repeating a square (being a knight, it is of course allowed to jump over squares it has previously landed on).
:).
A magic square is a square grid, with each grid position numbered, such that the horizontals, verticals, and diagonals all add to the same number (you can also ask for all the broken diagonals to add to this number, but this doesn't have to hold in a basic magic square).
If we number the knight's initial position 1, and increment with every jump, then a knights tour gives us a numbered n by n square (8 by 8 in the case of a normal chessboard).
The question: are there any knights tours which give us a magic square after we perform this numbering operation?
The answer: no, although there are many tours which give us a 'semi-magic' square (where the horizonals and verticals, but not the diagonals, give us the same sum).
The point: although magic squares have a variety of surprising uses, there seems to be no 'point' to the magic knights tour question other than another line in the book of 'solved minor problems' -- but if it's enough to write a paper on, then you can bet you'll be able to find a graduate student to do it
People have been saying that the file dialog is going to be fixed 'real soon now' for *more than three years*.
I'll give Gnome another go *when* the file dialog is fixed, and not before.
You want Gamma[Pi+1], then.
You're a little incoherent, and you've also got the wrong end of my stick, but it's probably early where you live, so I'll explain in easier words.
This is not the same as 'yet another KDE story', or 'yet another kernel release story'.
The entire worth of SCO is now dependent on publicity. Every time we talk about them when we have nothing new to talk about, all we are doing is raising their profile. This is a bad idea.
SCO has filed their suit. IBM has filed their counter-suit. Until something else significant happens, we should just deny SCO the free advertising space we're giving them. We're making them seem more important than they are.
Any chance we can stop giving this corporate protection racket so much free publicity?
"When IBM let their lawyers lose"
It's *loose*, for fuck's sake -- *loose*. 'Lose' in this context gives a completely different meaning.
That would be 'both of me are evil twins'.
In the 16th and 17th century actors and stenographers would conspire to rush off unlicenced copies of popular plays. The most famous example of this is the 'Bad Quarto' of Hamlet. This appeared in print several years before the authorised edition, and was based on the memory of two or three of the principal actors, with much filling from other popular works.
In the 19th century the USA was the piracy centre of the English speaking world -- bootleg editions of every popular British work would be printed, with no money getting back to the original British writers. You can read many complaints from English authors of the time about this situation.
Even if we restrict ourselves to illegal distribution through the internet, this is not a new phenomenon. The alt.binaries.ebook newsgroup has been around for many years -- the only thing which has changed is the mass availabilty of scanners which would have cost thousands only ten years ago. So, instead of having to manually type a book to copy it, we can now scan and OCR.
Just as with music distribution, we need to emphasise that there is an incredible amount of *legal* book distribution on the internet. The standard bearer is Project Gutenberg -- creating free electronic copies of out of copyright texts since 1971.
No, it's called *losing* a generation.
Yep. In fact, there's a really nice interactive corewars server here.
Perhaps he read the title ((oldest planet ever) discovered), instead of ((oldest planet) (ever discovered)).
Freenet links are only immune to the Slashdot effect to the extent that, due to the nature of the system, *every* Freenet link feels Slashdotted, no matter how popular it is.
The stereotypical Che image was also the basis of this poster campaign promoting the Church of England last year.
The Peoples' Liberation Front of Gentoo
All cry out: One Man! One Distro!
He's probably a designer in the 1970s mould -- those who gifted my home town (Birmingham, in the UK) with innumerable pustules of architecture in 'hunt the entrance' concrete form.
Wow -- reading that thread gave me a serious headache. The poor guy is making his source code available, and doing far more than 99% of people would ever do (by offering to send it to people on CD if they don't want to download it), and the Debian weenies are *still* bitching at him.
5.8% is hardly 'owning'.
The parent comment was written before my first coffee of the morning. You can tell this because the first clause of the second sentence is utter nonsense, and should be: It's now the main route through which books go to get into PG . Apologies.
And might I also mention that if you want to get involved in helping PG, we have a wonderful Distributed Proofreading project. It's now the main route through which books go to get only DP, and we're almost up to 1500 books processed. Anyone can join -- we need all the proofreaders we can get!
However, I am a much more careful and much better driver than many, if not most of the idiots swarming around me on the highways of Chicago.
No, you think you're driving carefully. You're not.
Something like Peercast, perhaps?
Next term try teaching them Python instead.
Then, when they understand the concepts, you can introduce them to the syntactic nightmare that is Java.
You know BitTorrent's not an illegal file sharing tool, but anyway -- if you think 2k down / 25k up's bad, you've obviously never used eDonkey/eMule! When you're trying to download something, and the lowest queue position you're in is 400, you'll learn to appreciate BitTorrent.
See the horrendous terms and conditions of the Oxford Text Archive for an example of a 'free' book archive which isn't really free at all.
If we can take their page images, and process them into a Project Gutenberg text through the Distributed Proofreading site, *then* it will be of benefit to humanity.
Yeah, I used to work somewhere which had very draconian password requirements (changed every 30 days, nothing you've had before, nothing too short, can't just contain letters, can't just be a word with 0's for o's and 3's for e's, etc.). Amusingly, 'qq1122qq' was a perfectly valid password. So I started with that, and every month moved one character to the right.
:).
No, qq1122qq is not the password to my Slashdot account