You did notice that the article you quote was an editorial, didn't you?
I point this out because it's become clear that most people---and many "news" organizations---hardly make this distinction anymore. One can harp on the New York Times for being a liberal paper, and as far as the editorial page is concerned you won't get any argument from me; I'm guessing they would cherish the label. Likewise, the Wall Street Journal is an openly conservative paper when it comes to its editorial page.
Both are good, authoritative sources of news, however. Certainly there is some leak of opinion into the news coverage---human nature, you know---but in both cases there is an effort to keep them separate.
If Fox News is conservative and CNN is liberal, that's fine. (I say "if"---I'm not sure it's true.) We should have a difference in views put forth. Where they both fall down is in being clear which they are presenting at any one time.
(One could also argue the quality of the coverage. The balance between news and opinion is funny, and there are better quality opinon pieces than others: I can disagree with a well-reasoned opinon, but not all are well-reasoned.)
Second: It's simple. It's cute. It's the kind of bug that makes a dev go, "Doh!", and so it's not absurd to show some interest in it. It's also a fun game to try to pin down what the problem is.
Third: Does it warrant a/. story? Have you seen half the stories that come through here?;)
> >and they certainly don't claim that animal protein causes type II diabetes
>
> Excuse me? Read the TITLE of the 'study'! It contains exactly that claim.
Do you must mean the title of the article, "Alternative Treatments of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus," or the title of the summary, "ENDO: Type 2 Diabetics Benefit From Reducing Intake Of Animal Protein"?
Neither one of which seems to suggest a cause for diabetes.
Hmm... it's hard to tell exactly what they did from this summary, and they certainly don't claim that animal protein causes type II diabetes. The author is quoted as explaining an indirect link between animal protein and a potential cause of insulin resistance. From the summary it doesn't sound like the author is making any extraordinary claims.
Of course, we're arguing about a paper which neither of us has read... seems a bit amusing considering the topic of the post.
This highlights a potential problem for traditional publications as well.
A research library used to serve a double role, both providing access to resources and in some sense backing up them up, but with many libraries moving their journal subscriptions from paper to web-based electronic ones, should the journal go away for some reason these resources have a much grater chance of simply disappearing.
Electronic papers are great---they allow for better searches, easier distribution, and let me avoid peeling my butt out of my chair to go to the library. However, libraries really must endeavor to keep local copies of as much of their inventory as possible.
It is my understanding that the federal government is the one responsible for GPS (or other technology aimed at locating the unit) being added to phones, purportedly so better locate them in the case of a 911 call.
Is there any reason that a phone could not simply fire up the GPS unit when 911 were called? Do any of these GPS-enabled units do this?
Somehow this feature seems like it would be a major selling point to me.
I've come to think that Star Wars---all of them---and The Matrix are pretty similar:
they're all big flashy movies that make the viewer feel like there's some deep meaning in them when they don't.
I have to say, I've enjoyed them all, but I think they're all overhyped.
I've heard this before, and I'm somehow amazed by it.
Perhaps I don't understand the protocol well enough, but it seems to me that you're sending eachother messages from inside your network to Yahoo and back, all in the clear. I'm always creeped out by this with idle chatter, but with internal company information?
Screw firing people for wasting time. If my employees were jeopardizing company data like this I'd have 'em out on their ear.
The assumption that puns are per se contemptible, betrayed by the habit of describing every pun not as a pun, but as a bad pun or a feeble pun, is a sign at once of sheepish docility and desire to seem superior. Puns are good, bad, and indifferent and only those who lack the wit to make them are unaware of the fact. H. W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 1965
Ask for
me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man. Mercutio, dying
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene 1
An encryption scheme is only useful if a message can be decrypted by the receiving party. So if you make use of the chunk-o'-radium, how is another machine ever going to reconstruct the original message? Obviously, the remote machine has to have access to the same bits of randomness as the original machine. Which means you have to transmit the key.
Sure. My only point was to say that a one-time pad really must be random. Of course it has to get to both machines, but without a real random pad it's worthless from the get go.
What they're doing sounds like BS.
What might be of some use is the following: Put a card in my machine that generates true randomness (radium, pop-a-matic, etc.). When I plug my cell phone into it, it generates a one time pad and distributes it over the line to the cell phone. Now the phone can talk to the computer using the pad with perfect encryption and little processing overhead.
I don't expect to see this, but at least it's a reasonable situation.
From a quick scan of the article this seems doubtful as a one time pad. Maybe not completely worthless, though...
Certainly, a one time pad is only a one time pad if it is *truly* random. Unless the machine generating it has a true source of randomness---like a chunk-o'-radium or a pop-a-matic bubble---then they've just pushed the encryption somewhere else, and gained no security.
It still could be useful to generate such pads, since some devices (cell phones, etc.) don't have much processing power, and this is a way of offloading the encryption to a more powerful machine. Of course, you still need a secure method of transferring the pad.
But it doesn't sound like this is what they're doing, since they claim not to store the pad anywhere...
I'm dubious---encryption is only as good as the weakest link.
Pessimal Algorithms and Simplexity Analysis
on
Deep Algorithms?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The short answer is yes, although there's a bit of an overloading of the term "language" here.
The point is that a Universal Turing Machine is a Turing Machine that accepts any other Turing Machines as input, and then executes it. This is interesting, but seems kind of mundane these days since we're used to it.
To cast this into something more concrete, consider C programs (with infinite memory, blah, blah). In this language, a C-Machine is any program that I've written, whereas as Universal C-Machine is a particular program which takes as input a C program and executes it.
My OS + compiler is an example of this. I give it any program, and it is compiled and run. This is where the univerality comes in.
There is something to be shown that I can have one system like this that can describe itself. These days it seems hard to conceive of it being otherwise, however. The fact that the machine could concievably run itself is where things really get interesting.
Not all languages are able to do this. I can't do the same thing with regular expressions, for example.
My point in the original reply was that this not be done with Turing Machines specifically, but any such structure is fine. C is one example.
I've just realized that I've answered more than you asked, but now the easiest thing to is hit submit and let you sort it out.:)
They're the same in that any problem written for one can be written for the other.
The idea is that a universal machine is one that any algorithm can be executed on. Of course, this depends on what you call an algorithm, but most reasonable definitions are equivalent here.
I think of a Universal Turing Machine as a specific implementation that meets this requirement. Specifically, a state machine coupled to an infinite tape. There are plenty of other viable machines: infinate register machines, c code with infinite memory, etc.
It seems to me that a network makes a decision to cancel a show on economic grounds: they feel that they could make more money by running something else. Why would a network make a decision based on such a campaign?
I mean, if you offered to pay them money (big money) to keep the show on, that would be something, but why is there any reason to believe that they'd keep a show just because some people ask them nicely? If enough people actually watched the show it would be a different story.
There's probably a benefit to having source code publicly available, but most people only want, only need, and should only have to deal with code
that executes.
Slashdot Mirror
I point this out because it's become clear that most people---and many "news" organizations---hardly make this distinction anymore. One can harp on the New York Times for being a liberal paper, and as far as the editorial page is concerned you won't get any argument from me; I'm guessing they would cherish the label. Likewise, the Wall Street Journal is an openly conservative paper when it comes to its editorial page.
Both are good, authoritative sources of news, however. Certainly there is some leak of opinion into the news coverage---human nature, you know---but in both cases there is an effort to keep them separate.
If Fox News is conservative and CNN is liberal, that's fine. (I say "if"---I'm not sure it's true.) We should have a difference in views put forth. Where they both fall down is in being clear which they are presenting at any one time.
(One could also argue the quality of the coverage. The balance between news and opinion is funny, and there are better quality opinon pieces than others: I can disagree with a well-reasoned opinon, but not all are well-reasoned.)
Second: It's simple. It's cute. It's the kind of bug that makes a dev go, "Doh!", and so it's not absurd to show some interest in it. It's also a fun game to try to pin down what the problem is.
Third: Does it warrant a /. story? Have you seen half the stories that come through here? ;)
Sorry, I misspoke. I meant tags. The page
<body>
<input type crash>
</body>
does not seem to cause the crash. The "crash" has nothing to do with it, it would seem.
<input type foo>
causes a crash, as does
<input type>
You do need something, as
<input>
is just fine.
I doubt it. From my quick toying around, it seems that if the offending tag appears inside of a tag there's no such effect.
:)
It's hard to divine the exact fatal combination, of course.
Try the page:
<input type crash>
Looks like the bug has something to do with an <input> tag not inside a <form> tag. Curious.
Which is why I usually remap Caps Lock to an extra Esc. What a useless key...
>
> Excuse me? Read the TITLE of the 'study'! It contains exactly that claim.
Do you must mean the title of the article, "Alternative Treatments of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus," or the title of the summary, "ENDO: Type 2 Diabetics Benefit From Reducing Intake Of Animal Protein"?
Neither one of which seems to suggest a cause for diabetes.
Of course, we're arguing about a paper which neither of us has read... seems a bit amusing considering the topic of the post.
A research library used to serve a double role, both providing access to resources and in some sense backing up them up, but with many libraries moving their journal subscriptions from paper to web-based electronic ones, should the journal go away for some reason these resources have a much grater chance of simply disappearing.
Electronic papers are great---they allow for better searches, easier distribution, and let me avoid peeling my butt out of my chair to go to the library. However, libraries really must endeavor to keep local copies of as much of their inventory as possible.
Good timing: you answered my question in the very next message. :)
Is there any reason that a phone could not simply fire up the GPS unit when 911 were called? Do any of these GPS-enabled units do this?
Somehow this feature seems like it would be a major selling point to me.
I have to say, I've enjoyed them all, but I think they're all overhyped.
No, the main advantage is easier tracking of the customer.
Perhaps I don't understand the protocol well enough, but it seems to me that you're sending eachother messages from inside your network to Yahoo and back, all in the clear. I'm always creeped out by this with idle chatter, but with internal company information?
Screw firing people for wasting time. If my employees were jeopardizing company data like this I'd have 'em out on their ear.
H. W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 1965
Ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man.
Mercutio, dying
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene 1
I don't really see much point here either, but this scheme (mine, not theirs) would achieve perfect encryption with little computation on one end.
Yes: small message; small gain; small benefit.
Sure. My only point was to say that a one-time pad really must be random. Of course it has to get to both machines, but without a real random pad it's worthless from the get go.
What they're doing sounds like BS.
What might be of some use is the following: Put a card in my machine that generates true randomness (radium, pop-a-matic, etc.). When I plug my cell phone into it, it generates a one time pad and distributes it over the line to the cell phone. Now the phone can talk to the computer using the pad with perfect encryption and little processing overhead.
I don't expect to see this, but at least it's a reasonable situation.
Certainly, a one time pad is only a one time pad if it is *truly* random. Unless the machine generating it has a true source of randomness---like a chunk-o'-radium or a pop-a-matic bubble---then they've just pushed the encryption somewhere else, and gained no security.
It still could be useful to generate such pads, since some devices (cell phones, etc.) don't have much processing power, and this is a way of offloading the encryption to a more powerful machine. Of course, you still need a secure method of transferring the pad.
But it doesn't sound like this is what they're doing, since they claim not to store the pad anywhere...
I'm dubious---encryption is only as good as the weakest link.
Pessimal Algorithms and Simplexity Analysis Read it---you'll like it. Find out the best algorithm to use if your boss makes you sort a list in Paris.
The point is that a Universal Turing Machine is a Turing Machine that accepts any other Turing Machines as input, and then executes it. This is interesting, but seems kind of mundane these days since we're used to it.
To cast this into something more concrete, consider C programs (with infinite memory, blah, blah). In this language, a C-Machine is any program that I've written, whereas as Universal C-Machine is a particular program which takes as input a C program and executes it.
My OS + compiler is an example of this. I give it any program, and it is compiled and run. This is where the univerality comes in.
There is something to be shown that I can have one system like this that can describe itself. These days it seems hard to conceive of it being otherwise, however. The fact that the machine could concievably run itself is where things really get interesting.
Not all languages are able to do this. I can't do the same thing with regular expressions, for example.
My point in the original reply was that this not be done with Turing Machines specifically, but any such structure is fine. C is one example.
I've just realized that I've answered more than you asked, but now the easiest thing to is hit submit and let you sort it out. :)
The idea is that a universal machine is one that any algorithm can be executed on. Of course, this depends on what you call an algorithm, but most reasonable definitions are equivalent here.
I think of a Universal Turing Machine as a specific implementation that meets this requirement. Specifically, a state machine coupled to an infinite tape. There are plenty of other viable machines: infinate register machines, c code with infinite memory, etc.
Of course, I miss the 1 and hit the 3. That's exercise 1.1, for those of you following along at home.
After you have mastered the material in this boo, what will you be: A TeXpert, or a TeXnician?
1.1. A TeXnician (underpaid); sometimes also called a TeXacker.
I mean, if you offered to pay them money (big money) to keep the show on, that would be something, but why is there any reason to believe that they'd keep a show just because some people ask them nicely? If enough people actually watched the show it would be a different story.
There's probably a benefit to having source code publicly available, but most people only want, only need, and should only have to deal with code that executes.