I'm not sure that it's ever ethical for robots to go up against men in battle. Manna-a-manno is one thing - I look you in the eye as I kill you, risk my life to take yours - seems fair. A robot going up against a human however is an entirely lopsided proposition since there is an entirely asymmetrical risk involved. Of course they'd be effective for that very reason - they would be fearless and can put themselves in harms way without a thought to their own safety.
Where's the disincentive to war when it's only a matter of budget/technology rather than your own lives at risk?
Whatever happened to the Geneva Convention where there was at least a few rules to try to keep a shred of humanity in warfare?
I wasn't aware that Doxygen could also be used as a call-graph generator, and I've wanted something like Graphviz for quite a while for non-software usage!
Close, but old school means pens or pencils instead of colored markers, and the printout needs to be on fanfold tractor-feed paper - with the listing spread out to full length on the floor. A laser printer and a roll of scotch tape works too!;-)
I disagree. They may not always go hand in hand, but they are certainly highly correlated. Genius is generally more an abnormality than a gift - a step in the direction of the idiot savant, where a slightly miswired brain appears to devotes more resources to some area, but very much at the cost of being deficient in others.
US students ability on math and science fell bang in the middle of all participating countries (22 better than the US, 22 worse, 12 similar).
If you restrict the comparison to the OECD (generally more developed) countries, then the US looks a bit worse with 31 countries doing better, 20 worse and 5 similar.
Are you aware of any books intelligable (or even intended) for the "scientific layman" that discuss how the developing body (from initial egg division onwards) structurally forms in terms of the big picture?
I understand that undifferentiated cells specialize according to local chemical markers (or at least can do per this recellularized heart), but how do those markers get there in the first place? It seems a chicken and the egg type of problem - the structure (or at least cell specialization) forms according to chemical markers, but in seems the chemical markers can only have got to the right place by having the structure already develop. I could hypothesize a subdividing scheme where one initial marker somehow becomes 2 or more (in different locations in the dividing egg), each of which then latr give rise to further localized variants, etc, etc, but is that how it actually happens?
I'm also curious how asymmetry begins to develop - how (at the simplest level of explanation) does a dividing egg stop being a symmetric ball and develop left/right symmetry around a centerline, and develop top/bottom (upper vs lower body) asymmetry, etc?
Any very brief overview or book reommendations would be appreciated!
The poetic justice is not that Soghoian (who exposed the vulnerability) was investigated by the FBI and TSA, but rather the exact opposite, that having been investigated by the FBI/TSA he was vindicated by the scathing congressional report agreeing with him. At least that's an accurate summary, although still a bit illogical since the FBI investigation was for a different issue altogether - him blogging about how to create fake boarding passes which doesn't seem the smartest thing to do if you are really concerned about security.
Its a theory, not a law. Evolution is unproven, it should be presented that way.
You're confusing the scientific use of the word theory with the english word theory.
All scientific knowledge is "theories", even when some become entrenched enough to be referred to as "laws", which has (in scientific jargon) no extra meaning whatsoever. For example, we have Newton's LAW of gravity, but Einstein's THEORY of general relativity which nonetheless supercedes Newton's "law" and proves it to only be an approximation that holds in limited circumstances! Of course in high school they teach you Newton's "law". Go figure.
Anyways, whether you call it a theory (whether or not using the scientific meaning of that word) or a law, you'd really be wrong in either case! Darwin's "theory" critically depended on a hypothesized mechanism for hereditary traits subject to some degree of variation, when at the time no such mechanism was in fact known! Since then of course DNA was discovered, proving Darwin's hypothesis to be correct.
If you consider the "theory of evolution" today, given the proven existence of DNA, then things like the creation of new species is nothing more than simple irrefutable logic - there's nothing in the least bit theoretical about it in any sense of the word.
The essence of evolution can be summed up by "survival of the fittest" (i.e. "those better able to compete, win") and the proven existence of an hereditory mechanism for those fitness traits (DNA) means that the fittest not only preferentially survive over the less fit, but that they also leave descendents who carry those same traits. It is therefore **inevitable** that species will evolve (DNA will change) over time in the direction of increased "fitness", and furthermore given that "fitness" (match between individual traits and the pervailing environment) is a function of environment, it is **inevitable** that a population divided into subgroups in different environments may genetically diverge. If the genetic divergence is sufficient to make interbreeding unsucessful then we call these seperate species (which will then **inevitably** continue to evolve independent of each other specifically because they have passed that "no turning back" point of inability to interbreed). There is nothing in the least bit "theoretical" about any of this given that DNA is a proven thing, no longer a Darwinian conjecture.
Darwinian evolution, "the origin of species", is inevitably going to happen regardless of whether god or any other mechanism is also creating new species. It is a plain fact, and absurd to deny it in a scientific classroom.
A theory is an explanation that seems to fit the known set of observations. Evolution is a good theory and lots of people are confident that that is how life got to the state it exists here on earth today. That is how a responsible science instructor should present it.
As above, new species creation (and evolution of existing species) according to Darwinian evolution is happening regardless of any other mechanism that you might like to theorise. The origin of life on earth in the first place, in it's simplest forms, is really a totally different matter than evolution and the creation of species.
Whether the first "life" occured naturally as chemicals similar to DNA/RNA/etc (or much simpler precursors) developed in the primordial "soup", or whether single cellular life arrived on a meteor from space, or was even created in an act of god makes no difference to the matter of evolution - given a starting point with an hereditory traits mechanism (DNA or a much simpler precursor), then evolution and the creation of new species will inevitable ensue.
I think many creationsists (or more generally those fighting the teaching of evolution) are confusing the origins of life with the origins of species, when they are in fact two diffentent things. Evolution and the origin of species is plain inevitable fact. The origin of life on earth is not so certain, certainly not proven.
At the very least they have effectively stopped teaching biology. I think it was Ernst Mayr (one of the leading biologists of our time - but probably unheard of in Florida) who described evolution as the basis of all modern biology.
Even ignoring the nonsense about "extremist religious views" being extremely common in America
Well, unlike you, I AM an American. I've lived the last 20 years of my life in America, and the first 25 in England, which I think positions me quite well to contrast the two and especially to see first hand what it is like in America (not at all what I imagined it to be like from the outside, notwithstanding having heard about the bible belt, etc).
Aside from first hand experience, polls say it all. You can't get much more extremist as a Christian than literal biblical belief (creationsism, young earth, etc), yet that is indeed what a huge swathe of the American population believe - while things like the recently opened creationist "museum" will still thankfully make most east/west coasters roll their eyes in disbelief, in the heartland this is a fairly mainstream belief.
You will get kooks of all sorts in any country, but there is a difference in having kooks regarded as such as opposed to being regarded as mainstream.
I'd be interested to know how you go from 'the laws of nature accurately describe the way the world works' to 'God cannot intervene in the world'. I really don't see (probably because it's simply not there) what falling apples and boiling water tell you about the existence (or lack thereof) of God.
If nature is controlled and describable by fixed laws then there is no room for it to be controlled by non-fixed laws (such as decision of god)! Simple as that.
e.g. It'd be ridiculous to say that an apple that just broke off it's branch fell down (vs up) due to god's will when science predicts that's what it's always going to do anyway - it makes any such god totally impotent because all you can ascribe to him (without being wrong) is that he will do what science says is going to happen anyway!
For there to be any possibility of a god with some power over the universe you'd have have to have things that occur contrary to science, but history has shown that that the number of things occuring contrary to science reduce as science advances (i.e. they are due to ignorance, not the will of god), and today we have arrived at the point where we essentially have a 100% description of nature (even if it'd be more intellectually satisfying to combine the lowest level laws such as general relativity and quantum physics into a single framework).
The only things that science can't predict today are large scale effects of non-linear systems where things like chaos (in mathematical sense) come to play, but this is matter of mathematical intractability not violation of physical law (which is still used to predict the dynamics of such systems, on different terms).
The same thing happened at the end of the Roman empire - rational thought and intellectualism (which had been highly valued by the Greeks, and earlier in the Roman empire) gave way to religious belief, and no doubt this was partly to blame (along with many other factors - such as mass influx of barbarians) for the decline of the culture and fall into the dark ages.
This really is an end-of-empire bell ringing for the short lived American empire. Extremist (e.g. literal biblical belief) christian religous views are SO common in America that it's hard to see this getting turned around - instead the culture will decline as other empires (europe, asia) that more value rationality and intellectualism will rise.
The only part of religion that are compatible with science are the parts that don't contradict it.
Any religious claims for a god that has even the tiniest power over or interaction with the physical world are demonstrably wrong.
Every time an apple falls off a tree and hits the ground, or heated water boils, or anything keeps on happening (without exception) according to the laws of nature discovered by science, it continues to confirm that any predictions contrary to the predictions of science are wrong.
However much you pray for god to intervene in your life he won't, because never in the history of the world has even a single atom of matter or molecule of neurotransmitter ever been seen to behave counter to the laws of science.
The only value of religion, and part of it not in contradiction with science, is the moral/social element, but frankly I think most aethiests are more moral than most religious folk, and that we'd be better off without religion all together, even if no doubt people would still find other excuses to kill each other and argue over.
The "dynamic" part of Apple's patent is certainly nothing new, and even if it had been it's trivially obvious. You're not going to put programmable key tops on a keyboard unless you plan to reprogram them!
Consumers don't think about usability at all when they buy, and as a simple consequence of that no time or effort is spent on it.
I'm sure that's largely true, and maybe even worse in that I'm sure there are some people who when faced with two products of same price, one with a 50 button remote and one with a 10 button remote, would choose the 50 button because it's "obviously more powerful - has more functions". I can see Marketing weenies asking for more buttons for the same reason.
OTOH, even though many consumers may not be looking for (or capable of judging) usability, usable products do tend to succeed in the marketplace because they get good word of mouth reputations and reviews because people do find them to be usable and do like that. The iPod, or Apples designs in general, are a good example of this.
Surely the fundamental reason why knots form (or rather why they persist/accumulate)is because of the inherent assymmetry of them formign/unforming.
A loose end in a jumble of coils, if jiggled around, is almost bound at some point to pass though a coil and form a potential knot, but a knot once formed is by no means destined to become unknotted, especially once additional knots form on the loose end thereby securing earlier knots.
If the chance of becoming knotted is less than the chance of becoming unknotted, then there's going to be a trend towards becoming increasingly knotted (to some limit where the accumulated knots limit mobility of the mass).
It seems there may also be a ratcheting effect once a loose knot forms - the knot/loop being bulky will more likely catch on the surrounding mass then the single stands leading into it, so that if the loose ends get tugged by the jiggling of the surrounding mass then the knot will tighten.
But there again I'm just a dude who uses string rather than a high powered topologist getting paid to research string, so what do I know?!
The RIAA should require all stores selling CDs to display prominent warning signs stating "It is illegal to buy CDs unless you agree to only play them on a CD player. If you copy these onto your MP3 player you will go to jail.".
These signs should preferably be placed close to the cash register to turn back customers who may have missed them elsewhere in the store and be unwittingly about to buy a CD for anything other than their grandfather's dust collecting CD player.
This simple solution should deter this heineious crime of people enjoying the music they buy in CD format, and should also (magically, against all expectations) boost CD sales.
Seeing as Appple's iTunes software supports loading of your CDs onto your iPod or (god forbid!) playing them on your PC, it's obvious that the RIAA should also ligitate against Apple to cripple ITunes functionality, and stop people from buying CDs for these nefarious listening purposes, and this should also magically boost CD sales.
What does this mean? It's not like you can sprinkle "threading" onto an app and have it magically improve things. There is quite [mozillazine.org] a lot [mozillazine.org] of thought on the subject of concurrent execution within the context of a browser, but it's not as if there is an existing software pattern that will just fix the issue that I think you are referring to.
The threading (aka concurrency) model for an appliction is somthing that should be thought carefully at the design stage, and there are indeed standard design principles to apply such as "for a responsive user interface make all time consuming operations independent of the UI".
If you've already badly designed and implemented a complex app then it may indeed be difficult to retrofit a well thought out concurrency model, but you shouldn't be thinking about basic design *after* implementation!
From the linked article, knol is about highlighting authors, and while (from the article) there may be competing knol pages on the same subject, there is no mention of someone being able to edit someone else's work - only to review or comment on it.
This certainly sounds like a solution to the edit wars that plague WikiPedia (which is useful, but entirely unattractive to write for given how it is run. The visibility of competing knol articles will be determined by their usefulness as reflected by PageRank and would be saboteurs or self-promoters can only try to write a better (PageRank-ed) article - they can't corrupt someone elses work.
Mac runs on Mac hardware. Hardly what I would call a fair test to what Linux has to stand up against.
Except that Linux doesn't always stand up agaist it. Sometimes it just gives up.
I used to run Ubuntu 6.06 ("Efty Edge") at home - mainstream hardware and it was fine. I recently tried to upgrade to 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon") and found it just plain doesn't boot. 7.04 doesn't boot either. I posted this on the Ubuntu forvm and got zero replies. OTOH the latest openSUSE and Madriva versions work just fine.
That's pretty much the way it is with Linux - when it works it's fine (but not very polished). When it doesn't - oh well, business as usual. I use Linux as a development target/platform for my hobby programming (voice recognition), and could really care less if need to run openSUSE vs Ubuntu, but I do have to say there's a voice in the back of my head saying to just switch to OS X anyway - because (on the hardware it's designed for) it does indeed just work, and I'd be extraordinarily surprised to upgrade and find it didn't work (at all).
I wonder if it'd be possible to interface to a USB wi-fi card? If it would be possible to take all the sensor (incl. camera) readings and send them to a desktop PC via wi-fi, and return control informtation to drive the beastie, then it'd make an excellent research / serious robot hobby platform.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure that it's ever ethical for robots to go up against men in battle. Manna-a-manno is one thing - I look you in the eye as I kill you, risk my life to take yours - seems fair. A robot going up against a human however is an entirely lopsided proposition since there is an entirely asymmetrical risk involved. Of course they'd be effective for that very reason - they would be fearless and can put themselves in harms way without a thought to their own safety.
Where's the disincentive to war when it's only a matter of budget/technology rather than your own lives at risk?
Whatever happened to the Geneva Convention where there was at least a few rules to try to keep a shred of humanity in warfare?
Here's hoping that MC Hawking does a cover of that!
http://www.mchawking.com/mp3s/
Interesting - thanks.
I wasn't aware that Doxygen could also be used as a call-graph generator, and I've wanted something like Graphviz for quite a while for non-software usage!
Close, but old school means pens or pencils instead of colored markers, and the printout needs to be on fanfold tractor-feed paper - with the listing spread out to full length on the floor. A laser printer and a roll of scotch tape works too! ;-)
Um, isn't the Vatican in Europe? There might be a few people there who believe.
1) Yes, the Vatican is in Europe
2) No, Catholics are not creationists. Try Googling for "pope john paul II evolution".
Genius and madness are orthogonal
I disagree. They may not always go hand in hand, but they are certainly highly correlated. Genius is generally more an abnormality than a gift - a step in the direction of the idiot savant, where a slightly miswired brain appears to devotes more resources to some area, but very much at the cost of being deficient in others.
Acording to this 2006 US goverment report:
http://nces.ed.gov/Surveys/PISA/pisa2006highlights.asp
US students ability on math and science fell bang in the middle of all participating countries (22 better than the US, 22 worse, 12 similar).
If you restrict the comparison to the OECD (generally more developed) countries, then the US looks a bit worse with 31 countries doing better, 20 worse and 5 similar.
Are you aware of any books intelligable (or even intended) for the "scientific layman" that discuss how the developing body (from initial egg division onwards) structurally forms in terms of the big picture?
I understand that undifferentiated cells specialize according to local chemical markers (or at least can do per this recellularized heart), but how do those markers get there in the first place? It seems a chicken and the egg type of problem - the structure (or at least cell specialization) forms according to chemical markers, but in seems the chemical markers can only have got to the right place by having the structure already develop. I could hypothesize a subdividing scheme where one initial marker somehow becomes 2 or more (in different locations in the dividing egg), each of which then latr give rise to further localized variants, etc, etc, but is that how it actually happens?
I'm also curious how asymmetry begins to develop - how (at the simplest level of explanation) does a dividing egg stop being a symmetric ball and develop left/right symmetry around a centerline, and develop top/bottom (upper vs lower body) asymmetry, etc?
Any very brief overview or book reommendations would be appreciated!
The poetic justice is not that Soghoian (who exposed the vulnerability) was investigated by the FBI and TSA, but rather the exact opposite, that having been investigated by the FBI/TSA he was vindicated by the scathing congressional report agreeing with him. At least that's an accurate summary, although still a bit illogical since the FBI investigation was for a different issue altogether - him blogging about how to create fake boarding passes which doesn't seem the smartest thing to do if you are really concerned about security.
Its a theory, not a law. Evolution is unproven, it should be presented that way.
You're confusing the scientific use of the word theory with the english word theory.
All scientific knowledge is "theories", even when some become entrenched enough to be referred to as "laws", which has (in scientific jargon) no extra meaning whatsoever. For example, we have Newton's LAW of gravity, but Einstein's THEORY of general relativity which nonetheless supercedes Newton's "law" and proves it to only be an approximation that holds in limited circumstances! Of course in high school they teach you Newton's "law". Go figure.
Anyways, whether you call it a theory (whether or not using the scientific meaning of that word) or a law, you'd really be wrong in either case! Darwin's "theory" critically depended on a hypothesized mechanism for hereditary traits subject to some degree of variation, when at the time no such mechanism was in fact known! Since then of course DNA was discovered, proving Darwin's hypothesis to be correct.
If you consider the "theory of evolution" today, given the proven existence of DNA, then things like the creation of new species is nothing more than simple irrefutable logic - there's nothing in the least bit theoretical about it in any sense of the word.
The essence of evolution can be summed up by "survival of the fittest" (i.e. "those better able to compete, win") and the proven existence of an hereditory mechanism for those fitness traits (DNA) means that the fittest not only preferentially survive over the less fit, but that they also leave descendents who carry those same traits. It is therefore **inevitable** that species will evolve (DNA will change) over time in the direction of increased "fitness", and furthermore given that "fitness" (match between individual traits and the pervailing environment) is a function of environment, it is **inevitable** that a population divided into subgroups in different environments may genetically diverge. If the genetic divergence is sufficient to make interbreeding unsucessful then we call these seperate species (which will then **inevitably** continue to evolve independent of each other specifically because they have passed that "no turning back" point of inability to interbreed). There is nothing in the least bit "theoretical" about any of this given that DNA is a proven thing, no longer a Darwinian conjecture.
Darwinian evolution, "the origin of species", is inevitably going to happen regardless of whether god or any other mechanism is also creating new species. It is a plain fact, and absurd to deny it in a scientific classroom.
A theory is an explanation that seems to fit the known set of observations. Evolution is a good theory and lots of people are confident that that is how life got to the state it exists here on earth today. That is how a responsible science instructor should present it.
As above, new species creation (and evolution of existing species) according to Darwinian evolution is happening regardless of any other mechanism that you might like to theorise. The origin of life on earth in the first place, in it's simplest forms, is really a totally different matter than evolution and the creation of species.
Whether the first "life" occured naturally as chemicals similar to DNA/RNA/etc (or much simpler precursors) developed in the primordial "soup", or whether single cellular life arrived on a meteor from space, or was even created in an act of god makes no difference to the matter of evolution - given a starting point with an hereditory traits mechanism (DNA or a much simpler precursor), then evolution and the creation of new species will inevitable ensue.
I think many creationsists (or more generally those fighting the teaching of evolution) are confusing the origins of life with the origins of species, when they are in fact two diffentent things. Evolution and the origin of species is plain inevitable fact. The origin of life on earth is not so certain, certainly not proven.
At the very least they have effectively stopped teaching biology. I think it was Ernst Mayr (one of the leading biologists of our time - but probably unheard of in Florida) who described evolution as the basis of all modern biology.
Even ignoring the nonsense about "extremist religious views" being extremely common in America
Well, unlike you, I AM an American. I've lived the last 20 years of my life in America, and the first 25 in England, which I think positions me quite well to contrast the two and especially to see first hand what it is like in America (not at all what I imagined it to be like from the outside, notwithstanding having heard about the bible belt, etc).
Aside from first hand experience, polls say it all. You can't get much more extremist as a Christian than literal biblical belief (creationsism, young earth, etc), yet that is indeed what a huge swathe of the American population believe - while things like the recently opened creationist "museum" will still thankfully make most east/west coasters roll their eyes in disbelief, in the heartland this is a fairly mainstream belief.
You will get kooks of all sorts in any country, but there is a difference in having kooks regarded as such as opposed to being regarded as mainstream.
I'd be interested to know how you go from 'the laws of nature accurately describe the way the world works' to 'God cannot intervene in the world'. I really don't see (probably because it's simply not there) what falling apples and boiling water tell you about the existence (or lack thereof) of God.
If nature is controlled and describable by fixed laws then there is no room for it to be controlled by non-fixed laws (such as decision of god)! Simple as that.
e.g. It'd be ridiculous to say that an apple that just broke off it's branch fell down (vs up) due to god's will when science predicts that's what it's always going to do anyway - it makes any such god totally impotent because all you can ascribe to him (without being wrong) is that he will do what science says is going to happen anyway!
For there to be any possibility of a god with some power over the universe you'd have have to have things that occur contrary to science, but history has shown that that the number of things occuring contrary to science reduce as science advances (i.e. they are due to ignorance, not the will of god), and today we have arrived at the point where we essentially have a 100% description of nature (even if it'd be more intellectually satisfying to combine the lowest level laws such as general relativity and quantum physics into a single framework).
The only things that science can't predict today are large scale effects of non-linear systems where things like chaos (in mathematical sense) come to play, but this is matter of mathematical intractability not violation of physical law (which is still used to predict the dynamics of such systems, on different terms).
I rather think it'd have made the headlines, don't you?
Apple flies off tree upwards! Water over flame stays stone cold! Shroedringer wave equation violated!
Space shuttle fails to take off - jumps ten feet sideways instead, and turns green!
Could be that god is just powerless in the science lab. Scared of the white coats.
The same thing happened at the end of the Roman empire - rational thought and intellectualism (which had been highly valued by the Greeks, and earlier in the Roman empire) gave way to religious belief, and no doubt this was partly to blame (along with many other factors - such as mass influx of barbarians) for the decline of the culture and fall into the dark ages.
This really is an end-of-empire bell ringing for the short lived American empire. Extremist (e.g. literal biblical belief) christian religous views are SO common in America that it's hard to see this getting turned around - instead the culture will decline as other empires (europe, asia) that more value rationality and intellectualism will rise.
The only part of religion that are compatible with science are the parts that don't contradict it.
Any religious claims for a god that has even the tiniest power over or interaction with the physical world are demonstrably wrong.
Every time an apple falls off a tree and hits the ground, or heated water boils, or anything keeps on happening (without exception) according to the laws of nature discovered by science, it continues to confirm that any predictions contrary to the predictions of science are wrong.
However much you pray for god to intervene in your life he won't, because never in the history of the world has even a single atom of matter or molecule of neurotransmitter ever been seen to behave counter to the laws of science.
The only value of religion, and part of it not in contradiction with science, is the moral/social element, but frankly I think most aethiests are more moral than most religious folk, and that we'd be better off without religion all together, even if no doubt people would still find other excuses to kill each other and argue over.
Art Lebedev's Optimus Maximus is also dynamic (application programmable). It's not just for static English vs Russian or QWERTY vs DVORAK layout.
e.g. The demo page shows specific layouts for Photoshop or even for Half-Life :
http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/demo/
The Art Lebedev Mini Three suggests an even greater variety of uses, including things like e-mail notification:
http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus-mini/overview/
The "dynamic" part of Apple's patent is certainly nothing new, and even if it had been it's trivially obvious. You're not going to put programmable key tops on a keyboard unless you plan to reprogram them!
That $932M is revenue (gross receipts). Their gross profit was $672M, and overall they reported a LOSS of $44M for the year.
Consumers don't think about usability at all when they buy, and as a simple consequence of that no time or effort is spent on it.
I'm sure that's largely true, and maybe even worse in that I'm sure there are some people who when faced with two products of same price, one with a 50 button remote and one with a 10 button remote, would choose the 50 button because it's "obviously more powerful - has more functions". I can see Marketing weenies asking for more buttons for the same reason.
OTOH, even though many consumers may not be looking for (or capable of judging) usability, usable products do tend to succeed in the marketplace because they get good word of mouth reputations and reviews because people do find them to be usable and do like that. The iPod, or Apples designs in general, are a good example of this.
Surely the fundamental reason why knots form (or rather why they persist/accumulate)is because of the inherent assymmetry of them formign/unforming.
A loose end in a jumble of coils, if jiggled around, is almost bound at some point to pass though a coil and form a potential knot, but a knot once formed is by no means destined to become unknotted, especially once additional knots form on the loose end thereby securing earlier knots.
If the chance of becoming knotted is less than the chance of becoming unknotted, then there's going to be a trend towards becoming increasingly knotted (to some limit where the accumulated knots limit mobility of the mass).
It seems there may also be a ratcheting effect once a loose knot forms - the knot/loop being bulky will more likely catch on the surrounding mass then the single stands leading into it, so that if the loose ends get tugged by the jiggling of the surrounding mass then the knot will tighten.
But there again I'm just a dude who uses string rather than a high powered topologist getting paid to research string, so what do I know?!
The RIAA should require all stores selling CDs to display prominent warning signs stating "It is illegal to buy CDs unless you agree to only play them on a CD player. If you copy these onto your MP3 player you will go to jail.".
These signs should preferably be placed close to the cash register to turn back customers who may have missed them elsewhere in the store and be unwittingly about to buy a CD for anything other than their grandfather's dust collecting CD player.
This simple solution should deter this heineious crime of people enjoying the music they buy in CD format, and should also (magically, against all expectations) boost CD sales.
Seeing as Appple's iTunes software supports loading of your CDs onto your iPod or (god forbid!) playing them on your PC, it's obvious that the RIAA should also ligitate against Apple to cripple ITunes functionality, and stop people from buying CDs for these nefarious listening purposes, and this should also magically boost CD sales.
What does this mean? It's not like you can sprinkle "threading" onto an app and have it magically improve things. There is quite [mozillazine.org] a lot [mozillazine.org] of thought on the subject of concurrent execution within the context of a browser, but it's not as if there is an existing software pattern that will just fix the issue that I think you are referring to.
The threading (aka concurrency) model for an appliction is somthing that should be thought carefully at the design stage, and there are indeed standard design principles to apply such as "for a responsive user interface make all time consuming operations independent of the UI".
If you've already badly designed and implemented a complex app then it may indeed be difficult to retrofit a well thought out concurrency model, but you shouldn't be thinking about basic design *after* implementation!
From the linked article, knol is about highlighting authors, and while (from the article) there may be competing knol pages on the same subject, there is no mention of someone being able to edit someone else's work - only to review or comment on it.
This certainly sounds like a solution to the edit wars that plague WikiPedia (which is useful, but entirely unattractive to write for given how it is run. The visibility of competing knol articles will be determined by their usefulness as reflected by PageRank and would be saboteurs or self-promoters can only try to write a better (PageRank-ed) article - they can't corrupt someone elses work.
Mac runs on Mac hardware. Hardly what I would call a fair test to what Linux has to stand up against.
Except that Linux doesn't always stand up agaist it. Sometimes it just gives up.
I used to run Ubuntu 6.06 ("Efty Edge") at home - mainstream hardware and it was fine. I recently tried to upgrade to 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon") and found it just plain doesn't boot. 7.04 doesn't boot either. I posted this on the Ubuntu forvm and got zero replies. OTOH the latest openSUSE and Madriva versions work just fine.
That's pretty much the way it is with Linux - when it works it's fine (but not very polished). When it doesn't - oh well, business as usual. I use Linux as a development target/platform for my hobby programming (voice recognition), and could really care less if need to run openSUSE vs Ubuntu, but I do have to say there's a voice in the back of my head saying to just switch to OS X anyway - because (on the hardware it's designed for) it does indeed just work, and I'd be extraordinarily surprised to upgrade and find it didn't work (at all).
I wonder if it'd be possible to interface to a USB wi-fi card? If it would be possible to take all the sensor (incl. camera) readings and send them to a desktop PC via wi-fi, and return control informtation to drive the beastie, then it'd make an excellent research / serious robot hobby platform.