Also.. i was the first year to undergo the new "revised" math curriculum.
Ahh... Did you graduate high school in 1999 or so? I graduated a bit before then, and I think mine was one of the last years to do calculus as part of the regular grade 12 math curriculum (AFAIK it's now only available as a separate course).
In canadian terms the british test is about grade 8 or grade 9 and the chinese one is about grade 10 maybe 11.
I call BS. I did high school in Canada (in BC), and trig isn't learned until grade 10 and 11, IIRC. The Chinese test looks like the grade 11 geometry proofs on steroids. BC is one of the higher-scoring provinces in math, so that's probably roughly true across the country.
As a physics PhD student, I can honestly say I've never had to do anything like the Chinese test or even the grade 11 geometry "proofs". Differential geometry, yes. "Proofs" of weird angle configurations, no.
No software is math pure and simple. A processor does math with numbers, moves them around to different places and transmits the numbers to peripheral devices. It does nothing more so it can be nothing but math.
Algorithms are different than pure math, hence the distinction between math and computer science. Also, information is physical. You can even use information to do work and compress a gas, just like you can use gasoline exploding in a car engine to do work. Your processor manipulates real, actual information, so there's more involved than just an equation in the abstract. I say this as a physicist who does research in the field of quantum information--the line between information and the physical world is not clearcut.
Suppose we approach it from another perspective--quantum teleportation (yes, this is for real, although it's at a very primitive stage and probably always will be). Using quantum teleportation, you can (in principle) take a pile of unordered particles, mix in some quantum information and some classical information, and get a car engine. The car engine in action can be described entirely mathematically as a unitary operator *.
Of course, we're both really just trying to split hairs, albeit in different ways. The USPTO has taken the view that computer programs are not math in the abstract, but, when combined with a processor capable of executing the program, are for legal purposes a machine that takes an input and spits out an output. This is not an unreasonable thing to .
It was the the court system that expand the scope of patents to cover ridiculous things like business processes and software but it's not up to the court system to control what in created.
Are you saying it was the courts (and not the USPTO) that decided to extend patent coverage to business process, etc.? AFAIK, that's not the case. The courts may have upheld a USPTO decision, but it was almost certainly the USPTO's call in the first place.
And software is mathematics.
Software is no more mathematics than your car's engine is. Hunk of metal + detailed design = car engine. Hunk of silicon + lots of code = computer implementation of an algorithm. Equations are math, but algorithms are processes for manipulating data, and that's an important distinction. There may be multiple algorithms for solving the same equation, with some more efficient than others. You can't patent the solution, only the process by which you arrive at it.
It's very true that the USPTO has let the bar of obviousness get way too low, but that doesn't mean the basic idea is mistaken.
You just log into State Farm's website and click the link that says "Free TurboTax", and when you get to the end of filing your taxes, the cost is $0.
Thanks for the tip--I'll try to keep it in mind for next year. Do you know if they let you file Schedule C (statement of Profit/Loss for small business) that way, or is it just super-basic tax returns?
one cannot predict for any individual species whether its complexity will increase, decrease, or remain the same.
Not with certainty, but statistically there are likely more ways for it to become more complex than less complex. If all mutations are equally probable, you are more likely to see an increase in complexity.
Perhaps people think someone should take this fight to the Supreme Court and get some sense back into interpretation of patent law.
It's not the Supreme Court's job to fix stupid laws, only unconstitutional ones. Patent law is actually pretty clearly within the constitutional domain of Congress. It's up to Congress to fix the law, not the courts.
Think about it--do you really want the least representative branch of government in charge of making laws AND ruling on their validity? There's a balance of power for a reason...
I've heard of interaction-free measurements and the Penrose bomb before (although I think it was given another name), but I'm not immediately seeing how this is relevant. Care to elaborate? Is it necessary to perform the experiment?
I work in a closely related field, and it's very hard even for those who work on evolutionary biology to hold in our minds the idea that things don't evolve towards greater complexity (with human beings at the pinacle), they evolve towards whatever works.
That may not be true. Suppose that "success" is evenly distributed over the full range of complexity. To define this more concretely, suppose that the probability that a particular DNA sequence codes for a "successful" organism is independent of the length of the sequence, except for some minimum limit.
Now, suppose that the first organisms were very simple (had short DNA sequences).
Finally, suppose that mutation is a random walk (something like the stepwise mutation model).
In this scenario, the trend will be towards more and more complicated organisms. The reason is that the starting point is a very small region of DNA state space (short DNA sequences), and most of the state space consists of very long sequences. This is a property of random walks, and is related to the second law of thermodynamics.
It's true can raise all sorts of objections to this simplified example, such as pointing out that longer DNA sequences don't necessarily translate into more of what we commonly recognize as complexity (there are plants with way, way more DNA than us), that "success" may not be evenly distributed, or objecting to mutation as a random walk. Even given these objections, I expect the basic idea may still hold.
As a Canadian I can assure you that our ever-vigilant Customs and Immigration officers would ask several sternly worded questions before they admitted such a person.
How dare they discriminate against the Incendiary-American community!
The US has a much higher rate, while the other countries have gun control laws.
Canada has more guns per capita than the US. Yes, there are probably relatively fewer handguns, but still, things are more complicated than you suggest. Then there's Israel or Switzerland, where tons of people have guns. What's the (non-terrorism) murder rate in those places?
I know from experience that supporting dual-boot is a huge pain. We have a bunch of dual-boot Win XP / Linux machines (with an Xserve running OS X Server providing file and authentication services). Supporting a dual-boot machine is harder than supporting two single-boot machines. Why? Because each machine will typically spend almost all its time in only one OS. This means that automatic software updates, virus def updates , daily/weekly/monthly cron jobs, etc., won't happen on the other OS, and you'll have huge maintenance nightmares.
Figure out what OS each machine needs to run, and install that one only. Another poster suggested Parallels, which is a great way to handle things if you only occasionally need a non-OS X OS.
I'm a physicist. I even have a very small bit of experience with low-temperature work (as an undergrad, I once used a dilution refrigerator to get a macroscopic object down to about 0.5 K, or half a degree above absolute zero). I'm now a theorist, working (in theory) with laser-cooled cold atoms, among other things. Despite all this, I have no clue what the significance is.
Lower temperatures are reachable with conventional techniques (such as dilution refrigerators). TFA suggests that the technique can eventually be used to achieve even lower temperatures, which they can use this to probe how quantum mechanics works with macroscopic objects. A good friend of mine is working on developing measures for characterizing macroscopic superpositions (so-called "cat states"), and I've never heard him mention ultra-cold mirrors as a candidate system; they usually think about things like Josephson junctions, BECs in double-well potentials, or the like.
If you'll forgive the pun, this is a very cool experiment, but it seems like a technique looking for an application. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea--the same was true of the laser once upon a time, but fortunately Charlie Townes et al didn't give up on it.
Let's say the University decides that during peak hours, dorm computers can use an aggregate of 100Gb/sec and 1000Gb/min during business hours and twice that at night without impacting other traffic.
I know you're just sticking in numbers for the sake of argument, but you're so many orders of magnitude off that it completely changes things. A medium-large university (40,000 students) might have something like 0.5-1 Gb/s of bandwidth to the mainstream Internet (with potentially higher-speed connections to certain other universities). Let's say 10,000 students live on-campus. Even if just 10% of those students use P2P apps, they could easily consume all of the university's bandwidth (and will, without throttling). Dividing up the university's entire bandwidth between all students leaves everybody with only 100 kb/s each.
100 kb/s is fairly crappy as a max speed. This leaves two options: daily / hourly / monthly transfer limits, or traffic shaping. Since BT now uses encryption to foil traffic shapping, you can either pull Rogers' braindead move of degrading encrypted traffic, or impose transfer caps.
There are plenty of free codecs out there that do a fine job. Why would a music store gravitate towards a non-free codec?
MP3 is patent-encumbered, whereas I believe AAC is not. Thus, there's nothing to stop someone from writing a Free AAC codec. In comparison, "Free" MP3 codecs are vulnerable to patent infringement suits unless somebody is paying licensing fees. The only advantage OGG has is that somebody has already written Free codecs. Somebody (maybe even Apple) will likely soon do the same for AAC if they haven't already. The big advantage AAC has is that Apple is behind it. That counts for a lot, considering iPod and iTMS market share.
(This post brought to you by I-want-a-job-and-don't-want-to-move-to-California. )
As a Vancouverite who's now living in California (in the Bay Area), I can tell you it's not a hard transition. Yes, the Sierras are farther away than the Coast Mountains (it's always nice being able to see the mountains from your window), but Yosemite is really, really amazing. Other pros are the availability of good, cheap Mexican food, and a better subway system (BART beats SkyTrain, although Vancouver's buses are pretty good). Cost of living isn't really much higher, either--Vancouver's done some serious catching up there, unfortunately.
Re:Does this still depend on weak IVs?
on
WEP Broken Even Worse
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· Score: 4, Informative
For some reason I can't get the paper to load, but anyway, does this still depend on weak initialization vectors?
According to the article, the attack does not require weak IVs. They haven't actually tested against WEPplus, but expect the attack to still work against it. In other words, WEP in all its forms is now nothing more than an electronic "No trespassing sign" and 3-foot fence.
I don't know about undergraduate works, but it is common practice at colleges and universities in the United States to have a copyright notice attached to a graduate thesis.
What US universities actually steal copyright from their students this? I want names so I can boycott them.
In the University of California system, students retain copyright over their theses.
I'm with #7. I love GNOME. The Mac UI confuses me.
OK, before I go further--do you consider yourself an average user, or a nerd/geek/power user? If the latter, you're not contradicting my argument, and may in fact be demonstrating point (6) to some degree. If the former--you consider yourself an "average" user--then you are probably the first reasonable person I've ever heard favor GNOME for average users. In that case, I'm wrong.
Assuming I'm not wrong on (7): That's fine if you prefer GNOME--more power to you--but for what it's worth I'll try to explain why the Mac OS is the way it is.
If I'm working inside a window near the bottom of my screen, it is a waste to move the mouse all the way to the top. Why can't I have my menus be near where I'm working?
Early on, Apple put a lot of research into their human interface guidelines. They found that, in general, the amount of time it takes a user to click a button, menu, or other control was inversely proportional to the size of the control. The exception was items at the edge of the screen, which were effectively "infinitely large" in one direction (since it was impossible to overshoot). Thus, in many cases, putting menus at a screen edge can make them faster to access. I find that, if my trackpad sensitivity is set properly, I can hit menus at the top of the screen very quickly, even if my cursor is initially at the bottom. If you're always working in small windows on a very large screen, menu-in-screen may work better for you.
And why does that window that pops up have 3 panes when you're just trying to open an app?
I'm not totally sure what you mean. Are you referring to column view in Finder windows? That's just one of three different views in Finder, the OS X file browser.
Shouldn't the app be in the menu instead of in some folder hidden somewhere?I don't get it. GNOME puts the programs in categories by you use it for and its in the menu, not opening up extra windows to get to a launcher. It's much easier to me.
Finder is only one of several means of launching applications. Commonly-used apps are usually added to the Dock, located by default at the bottom of the screen (thus benefitting from the same point I raised earlier about controls at the edge of the screen). You can replicate the category structure using a few folders of aliases in your Dock. For "power users", I highly recommend QuickSilver.
My very-non-geeky sister is confused by Macs too, but she asked for Linux after using my laptop.
The best way to help a non-timid neophyte get started on a Mac is to spend a few minutes talking to them about what they think they'll want to use the computer for, then stick the relevant programs in the Dock. Point out a few key apps, then tell them to go ahead and play. Reassure them they won't break it.
And Macs need to get right-click.
Am I being trolled? Macs have had right-click for many, many years. Plug a standard three-button mouse into a Mac and you'll see typical right-click functionality just work. Apple sells a mouse with right-click. Their laptops, although nominally one-button, let you do a "right-click" by placing two fingers on the trackpad while clicking, and on any Mac you can also just control-click to simulate a right click.
It sounds to me like you haven't given Macs a chance, or at least not recently. Buy, borrow, or otherwise use a Mac for a few days and you'll quickly get used to most of the differences you're complaining about. The few genuine preference issues you have can probably be resolved by tweaking the OS X interface with third-party utilities, although I'd strongly recommend giving the "Mac way" a fair try first. For your pains, you'll get all sorts of great stuff, ranging from launchd to Cocoa to the iLife apps to Photoshop. You may even find a Mac-only killer app for your interests, such as BibDesk for academics.
I also like how it's pointing out that it doesn't matter what type of computer you have. You can run Linux now. I guess many people are used to the idea of having to buy a new computer to change operating system.
It's understandable that anyone might prefer Linux to Windows. That said, many people are probably wondering, "If you have a Mac, why would you install Linux* on it?" This is a good question; pretty much any Linux program for which source is available can be recompiled for OS X. If it's command-line, no problem. If it's X11-based, just fire up Apple's free X11. The only snags are with binary-only software, but it's rare that you'd actually need to use a binary-only Linux app for which there's no Mac-native equivalent, and much more likely that you'd encounter the opposite situation.
I've actually installed Linux on a Mac on multiple occasions (starting with kernel 2.2.x on an original iMac, which was about the first time it was really possible), so I will try to enumerate the reasons:
0) Because you can. 1) For fun--you enjoy tinkering with things. 2) To learn about Linux. 3) To develop Linux-specific software, such as Linux kernel drivers. 4) Ideological reasons relating to Free Software--you refuse to run an OS where a portion of the code is non-Free (in which case you'd better be using Debian). 5) Because you care about performance in a particular niche where Linux has substantial real-world performance benefits over OS X. 6) You're so used to Linux's user interface that it would be too difficult for you to switch. 7) You actually think Linux's user interface is nicer than OS X (since they both offer the same choice of shells, this comes down to GUI preference).
I really can't think of any other reasons that make any sense--if you can, please reply and elaborate. Now, to the analysis.
It's pretty clear that the reasons given above are valid only for computer geeks. Normal people don't care about (0 - 5), (6) is obviously not applicable, and I have yet to meet a reasonable person who claims (7) holds true for "average" users. There's nothing wrong with this--being better than Windows for a lower price is a big accomplishment--but why imply that Linux is something it's not?
Linux is a great OS for many people whose alternative is Windows, and for geeks. It's not a good replacement for Mac OS X.
As an alternative ad that plays on the same themes, have PC as a guy, and have him break up with his girlfriend Vista because she's too demanding. PC sees Mac OS X (woman), and tries to hit on her, but is shot down because he's "not her type" and she "doesn't think they'd be compatible". Linux walks in, and she and PC hit it off. This would communicate that you can use your existing PC hardware to run Linux but not Mac OS X.
* I use Linux in the sense that everybody except Richard M Stallman uses--I mean the entire OS, in a generic sense that does not specify a particular distribution, rather than just the kernel.
You are far more likely to die in a car accident than from Yellowstone erupting as a super-volcano.
The median number of volcano deaths per year is probably very low. The expected mean, on the other hand, could be enormous. Supervolcano eruptions are rare but cataclysmic events. If they go off, say, every 10,000 years, and the next one is expected to kill 100 million people directly, that's an (expected) mean death toll of 10,000 per year. Oh, and that doesn't include a potential famine from the loss of farmland.
You should fear a sedentary life style and tobacco a lot more than volcanoes.
Ground mats are nice, but you can live without them.
Not if you're sleeping in cold conditions. A sleeping bag's down or synthetic fill will compress underneath your bodyweight and provide almost no insulation. That's what the pad is for--insulating you from the ground. Some sleeping bag manufacturers, such as Big Agnes, have taken to eliminating the down in the bottom of the bag (to save weight), and just providing a pocket for a ground pad. The original poster may be asking about traveling-around-Europe type backpacking, in which case this is irrelevant, or he may be planning to visit colder climates and sleep outdoors, in which case your advice could kill him.
In fact, most of the "high tech" junk that the yuppie backpacking places like REI and Any Mountain sells are just that: junk.
Some of the stuff they sell is unnecessary, but much of it is actually pretty good gear if you know where and how to use it. Their market is hikers and wilderness-backpackers, not Europe-backpackers, so that may be why it looks unnecessary to you.
I am also a physicist. And while I obey the second law, biology does things with it that most physicists would think are abhorent. This is why Biology is a separate field than thermodynamics and physics.
You are a sorry excuse for a physicist if you don't believe the second law governs biology. When I was teaching thermodynamics to undergrads, I would have docked serious marks for that. Either New Mexico Tech's graduate stat mech course really sucks, or you didn't have a decent undergraduate thermodynamics course, or--most likely--both.
The idea of the calorie is fundamentally flawed.
Calories are well-defined units of energy, just like Joules or electron-volts or BTUs. Do you think the idea of energy is flawed?
This concept is based on how many BTU's are given off by the oxidation of a particular substance. Why is this flawed? Because it isn't a measure of all the various metabolic pathways that substance may or may not go through.
The caloric content of food is measured by oxidizing it, converting it from its initial state to a particular final state. No matter what pathway it takes from initial state to final state, if you count all the energy released, it will be the same. Since we know that, for instance, carbohydrates + O2 --> CO2 + H2O (leaving out the ratios), we can come up with good caloric content estimates that apply for everybody. Some people might generate more waste heat than others when metabolizing the food, but they can't be more than 100% efficient (by the First Law of Thermodynamics).
Again, the kilocalorie is only the amount of energy given off by a substances reaction with oxygen. So, the same substance that gave 100 kilocalories (we usually just call them calories) in a pure oxidation reaction, may upon entering the body be immediatly converted to something else, say a fat molecule, and not make those 100 calories immediatly availiable to the organism that consumed it.
True, but we also know the caloric density of fat (9 Cal / g for pure fat), so we can estimate the resulting weight gain (which I did in my original post).
Everyone seems to want to simplefy the complexities of an individuals metabolism so that they can condemn other for not being the perfect weight or size.
I wasn't condemning anyone except the OP for being an idiot, and now you for being a bad physicist. The OP can be forgiven to some degree for not being a scientist, but you have absolutely no excuse. You either need to do some serious remedial studying, or get the hell out of the field. Go pray to the ghosts of Clausius, Kelvin, and Nernst for forgiveness and wisdom. Whatever you do, please don't try to teach.
Afterall, if obesity can be put into terms so simple as the second law of thermodynamics, then it should be simple for everyone to overcome.
Obesity IS governed by the laws of thermodynamics, or else we could build perpetual motion machines out of fat people. When you build one, I'll believe you that biology is exempt from the laws of physics.
But life and the metabolic pathway will not be shoehorned into an overly simplistic explanation just because we want the problem to go away.
Thermodynamics does not explain appetite, relative efficiencies of different people's metabolisms, or many other factors contributing to obesity. It does put some fundamental limits on things, though.
You are being needlessly inflammatory, and posting from a position of ignorance. Her calorie intake was documented EXACTLY as I stated. Over a period of six months, she gained roughly 35 pounds, while eating approximately 300 calories per day. Those are the facts. The fact that you do not like those facts does not change reality.
I am a physicist, and what you are claiming is highly implausible to the point of being what we men of science term utter bullshit. Allow me to explain: 1. In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics! 2. Let's say she really is eating only 300 Calories a day (54,000 Cal in 6 months), and that she gained 35 pounds in six months. Normally, a pound of body fat contains about 3,500 Calories (pure fat is 9 Cal / g, but some of that pound is water). 35 lb X 3,500 Cal / lb = 122,500 Cal, which is 68,500 Calories more than she ate! (Never mind that a person typically burns somewhat over a thousand Calories a day at rest.) 3. This leaves a few possibilities:
a. The weight she gained was mostly water. Possible, but retaining water isn't true obesity.
b. She has a freak mutation that allows her to perform photosynthesis.
c. She has a freak mutation that has caused her body to grow a Stirling engine inside of her, and she was in thermal contact with hot and cold reservoirs with which the Stirling engine could exchange energy, thus allowing her to convert atmospheric CO2 and water into sugars, etc.
d. Some of the most fundamental and firmly held laws of physics are wrong.
e. You're wrong.
Those are the facts. The fact that you do not like those facts does not change reality.
Anyway, I hope I made things a little clearer than mud. Sorry for the confusion and the wasted bandwidth.
That does really clear things up, and I agree with just about everything you said. In particular, I also see computer science as a branch of mathematics.
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Also.. i was the first year to undergo the new "revised" math curriculum.
Ahh... Did you graduate high school in 1999 or so? I graduated a bit before then, and I think mine was one of the last years to do calculus as part of the regular grade 12 math curriculum (AFAIK it's now only available as a separate course).
In canadian terms the british test is about grade 8 or grade 9 and the chinese one is about grade 10 maybe 11.
I call BS. I did high school in Canada (in BC), and trig isn't learned until grade 10 and 11, IIRC. The Chinese test looks like the grade 11 geometry proofs on steroids. BC is one of the higher-scoring provinces in math, so that's probably roughly true across the country.
As a physics PhD student, I can honestly say I've never had to do anything like the Chinese test or even the grade 11 geometry "proofs". Differential geometry, yes. "Proofs" of weird angle configurations, no.
No software is math pure and simple. A processor does math with numbers, moves them around to different places and transmits the numbers to peripheral devices. It does nothing more so it can be nothing but math.
Algorithms are different than pure math, hence the distinction between math and computer science. Also, information is physical. You can even use information to do work and compress a gas, just like you can use gasoline exploding in a car engine to do work. Your processor manipulates real, actual information, so there's more involved than just an equation in the abstract. I say this as a physicist who does research in the field of quantum information--the line between information and the physical world is not clearcut.
Suppose we approach it from another perspective--quantum teleportation (yes, this is for real, although it's at a very primitive stage and probably always will be). Using quantum teleportation, you can (in principle) take a pile of unordered particles, mix in some quantum information and some classical information, and get a car engine. The car engine in action can be described entirely mathematically as a unitary operator *.
Of course, we're both really just trying to split hairs, albeit in different ways. The USPTO has taken the view that computer programs are not math in the abstract, but, when combined with a processor capable of executing the program, are for legal purposes a machine that takes an input and spits out an output. This is not an unreasonable thing to .
* assuming the car engine is a closed system.
It was the the court system that expand the scope of patents to cover ridiculous things like business processes and software but it's not up to the court system to control what in created.
Are you saying it was the courts (and not the USPTO) that decided to extend patent coverage to business process, etc.? AFAIK, that's not the case. The courts may have upheld a USPTO decision, but it was almost certainly the USPTO's call in the first place.
And software is mathematics.
Software is no more mathematics than your car's engine is. Hunk of metal + detailed design = car engine. Hunk of silicon + lots of code = computer implementation of an algorithm. Equations are math, but algorithms are processes for manipulating data, and that's an important distinction. There may be multiple algorithms for solving the same equation, with some more efficient than others. You can't patent the solution, only the process by which you arrive at it.
It's very true that the USPTO has let the bar of obviousness get way too low, but that doesn't mean the basic idea is mistaken.
You just log into State Farm's website and click the link that says "Free TurboTax", and when you get to the end of filing your taxes, the cost is $0.
Thanks for the tip--I'll try to keep it in mind for next year. Do you know if they let you file Schedule C (statement of Profit/Loss for small business) that way, or is it just super-basic tax returns?
one cannot predict for any individual species whether its complexity will increase, decrease, or remain the same.
Not with certainty, but statistically there are likely more ways for it to become more complex than less complex. If all mutations are equally probable, you are more likely to see an increase in complexity.
Perhaps people think someone should take this fight to the Supreme Court and get some sense back into interpretation of patent law.
It's not the Supreme Court's job to fix stupid laws, only unconstitutional ones. Patent law is actually pretty clearly within the constitutional domain of Congress. It's up to Congress to fix the law, not the courts.
Think about it--do you really want the least representative branch of government in charge of making laws AND ruling on their validity? There's a balance of power for a reason...
I've heard of interaction-free measurements and the Penrose bomb before (although I think it was given another name), but I'm not immediately seeing how this is relevant. Care to elaborate? Is it necessary to perform the experiment?
I work in a closely related field, and it's very hard even for those who work on evolutionary biology to hold in our minds the idea that things don't evolve towards greater complexity (with human beings at the pinacle), they evolve towards whatever works.
That may not be true. Suppose that "success" is evenly distributed over the full range of complexity. To define this more concretely, suppose that the probability that a particular DNA sequence codes for a "successful" organism is independent of the length of the sequence, except for some minimum limit.
Now, suppose that the first organisms were very simple (had short DNA sequences).
Finally, suppose that mutation is a random walk (something like the stepwise mutation model).
In this scenario, the trend will be towards more and more complicated organisms. The reason is that the starting point is a very small region of DNA state space (short DNA sequences), and most of the state space consists of very long sequences. This is a property of random walks, and is related to the second law of thermodynamics.
It's true can raise all sorts of objections to this simplified example, such as pointing out that longer DNA sequences don't necessarily translate into more of what we commonly recognize as complexity (there are plants with way, way more DNA than us), that "success" may not be evenly distributed, or objecting to mutation as a random walk. Even given these objections, I expect the basic idea may still hold.
As a Canadian I can assure you that our ever-vigilant Customs and Immigration officers would ask several sternly worded questions before they admitted such a person.
How dare they discriminate against the Incendiary-American community!
The US has a much higher rate, while the other countries have gun control laws.
Canada has more guns per capita than the US. Yes, there are probably relatively fewer handguns, but still, things are more complicated than you suggest. Then there's Israel or Switzerland, where tons of people have guns. What's the (non-terrorism) murder rate in those places?
I know from experience that supporting dual-boot is a huge pain. We have a bunch of dual-boot Win XP / Linux machines (with an Xserve running OS X Server providing file and authentication services). Supporting a dual-boot machine is harder than supporting two single-boot machines. Why? Because each machine will typically spend almost all its time in only one OS. This means that automatic software updates, virus def updates , daily/weekly/monthly cron jobs, etc., won't happen on the other OS, and you'll have huge maintenance nightmares.
Figure out what OS each machine needs to run, and install that one only. Another poster suggested Parallels, which is a great way to handle things if you only occasionally need a non-OS X OS.
I'm a physicist. I even have a very small bit of experience with low-temperature work (as an undergrad, I once used a dilution refrigerator to get a macroscopic object down to about 0.5 K, or half a degree above absolute zero). I'm now a theorist, working (in theory) with laser-cooled cold atoms, among other things. Despite all this, I have no clue what the significance is.
Lower temperatures are reachable with conventional techniques (such as dilution refrigerators). TFA suggests that the technique can eventually be used to achieve even lower temperatures, which they can use this to probe how quantum mechanics works with macroscopic objects. A good friend of mine is working on developing measures for characterizing macroscopic superpositions (so-called "cat states"), and I've never heard him mention ultra-cold mirrors as a candidate system; they usually think about things like Josephson junctions, BECs in double-well potentials, or the like.
If you'll forgive the pun, this is a very cool experiment, but it seems like a technique looking for an application. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea--the same was true of the laser once upon a time, but fortunately Charlie Townes et al didn't give up on it.
Let's say the University decides that during peak hours, dorm computers can use an aggregate of 100Gb/sec and 1000Gb/min during business hours and twice that at night without impacting other traffic.
I know you're just sticking in numbers for the sake of argument, but you're so many orders of magnitude off that it completely changes things. A medium-large university (40,000 students) might have something like 0.5-1 Gb/s of bandwidth to the mainstream Internet (with potentially higher-speed connections to certain other universities). Let's say 10,000 students live on-campus. Even if just 10% of those students use P2P apps, they could easily consume all of the university's bandwidth (and will, without throttling). Dividing up the university's entire bandwidth between all students leaves everybody with only 100 kb/s each.
100 kb/s is fairly crappy as a max speed. This leaves two options: daily / hourly / monthly transfer limits, or traffic shaping. Since BT now uses encryption to foil traffic shapping, you can either pull Rogers' braindead move of degrading encrypted traffic, or impose transfer caps.
There are plenty of free codecs out there that do a fine job. Why would a music store gravitate towards a non-free codec?
MP3 is patent-encumbered, whereas I believe AAC is not. Thus, there's nothing to stop someone from writing a Free AAC codec. In comparison, "Free" MP3 codecs are vulnerable to patent infringement suits unless somebody is paying licensing fees. The only advantage OGG has is that somebody has already written Free codecs. Somebody (maybe even Apple) will likely soon do the same for AAC if they haven't already. The big advantage AAC has is that Apple is behind it. That counts for a lot, considering iPod and iTMS market share.
(This post brought to you by I-want-a-job-and-don't-want-to-move-to-California. )
As a Vancouverite who's now living in California (in the Bay Area), I can tell you it's not a hard transition. Yes, the Sierras are farther away than the Coast Mountains (it's always nice being able to see the mountains from your window), but Yosemite is really, really amazing. Other pros are the availability of good, cheap Mexican food, and a better subway system (BART beats SkyTrain, although Vancouver's buses are pretty good). Cost of living isn't really much higher, either--Vancouver's done some serious catching up there, unfortunately.
For some reason I can't get the paper to load, but anyway, does this still depend on weak initialization vectors?
According to the article, the attack does not require weak IVs. They haven't actually tested against WEPplus, but expect the attack to still work against it. In other words, WEP in all its forms is now nothing more than an electronic "No trespassing sign" and 3-foot fence.
I don't know about undergraduate works, but it is common practice at colleges and universities in the United States to have a copyright notice attached to a graduate thesis.
What US universities actually steal copyright from their students this? I want names so I can boycott them.
In the University of California system, students retain copyright over their theses.
I'm with #7. I love GNOME. The Mac UI confuses me.
OK, before I go further--do you consider yourself an average user, or a nerd/geek/power user? If the latter, you're not contradicting my argument, and may in fact be demonstrating point (6) to some degree. If the former--you consider yourself an "average" user--then you are probably the first reasonable person I've ever heard favor GNOME for average users. In that case, I'm wrong.
Assuming I'm not wrong on (7):
That's fine if you prefer GNOME--more power to you--but for what it's worth I'll try to explain why the Mac OS is the way it is.
If I'm working inside a window near the bottom of my screen, it is a waste to move the mouse all the way to the top. Why can't I have my menus be near where I'm working?
Early on, Apple put a lot of research into their human interface guidelines. They found that, in general, the amount of time it takes a user to click a button, menu, or other control was inversely proportional to the size of the control. The exception was items at the edge of the screen, which were effectively "infinitely large" in one direction (since it was impossible to overshoot). Thus, in many cases, putting menus at a screen edge can make them faster to access. I find that, if my trackpad sensitivity is set properly, I can hit menus at the top of the screen very quickly, even if my cursor is initially at the bottom. If you're always working in small windows on a very large screen, menu-in-screen may work better for you.
And why does that window that pops up have 3 panes when you're just trying to open an app?
I'm not totally sure what you mean. Are you referring to column view in Finder windows? That's just one of three different views in Finder, the OS X file browser.
Shouldn't the app be in the menu instead of in some folder hidden somewhere?I don't get it. GNOME puts the programs in categories by you use it for and its in the menu, not opening up extra windows to get to a launcher. It's much easier to me.
Finder is only one of several means of launching applications. Commonly-used apps are usually added to the Dock, located by default at the bottom of the screen (thus benefitting from the same point I raised earlier about controls at the edge of the screen). You can replicate the category structure using a few folders of aliases in your Dock. For "power users", I highly recommend QuickSilver.
My very-non-geeky sister is confused by Macs too, but she asked for Linux after using my laptop.
The best way to help a non-timid neophyte get started on a Mac is to spend a few minutes talking to them about what they think they'll want to use the computer for, then stick the relevant programs in the Dock. Point out a few key apps, then tell them to go ahead and play. Reassure them they won't break it.
And Macs need to get right-click.
Am I being trolled? Macs have had right-click for many, many years. Plug a standard three-button mouse into a Mac and you'll see typical right-click functionality just work. Apple sells a mouse with right-click. Their laptops, although nominally one-button, let you do a "right-click" by placing two fingers on the trackpad while clicking, and on any Mac you can also just control-click to simulate a right click.
It sounds to me like you haven't given Macs a chance, or at least not recently. Buy, borrow, or otherwise use a Mac for a few days and you'll quickly get used to most of the differences you're complaining about. The few genuine preference issues you have can probably be resolved by tweaking the OS X interface with third-party utilities, although I'd strongly recommend giving the "Mac way" a fair try first. For your pains, you'll get all sorts of great stuff, ranging from launchd to Cocoa to the iLife apps to Photoshop. You may even find a Mac-only killer app for your interests, such as BibDesk for academics.
I also like how it's pointing out that it doesn't matter what type of computer you have. You can run Linux now. I guess many people are used to the idea of having to buy a new computer to change operating system.
It's understandable that anyone might prefer Linux to Windows. That said, many people are probably wondering, "If you have a Mac, why would you install Linux* on it?" This is a good question; pretty much any Linux program for which source is available can be recompiled for OS X. If it's command-line, no problem. If it's X11-based, just fire up Apple's free X11. The only snags are with binary-only software, but it's rare that you'd actually need to use a binary-only Linux app for which there's no Mac-native equivalent, and much more likely that you'd encounter the opposite situation.
I've actually installed Linux on a Mac on multiple occasions (starting with kernel 2.2.x on an original iMac, which was about the first time it was really possible), so I will try to enumerate the reasons:
0) Because you can.
1) For fun--you enjoy tinkering with things.
2) To learn about Linux.
3) To develop Linux-specific software, such as Linux kernel drivers.
4) Ideological reasons relating to Free Software--you refuse to run an OS where a portion of the code is non-Free (in which case you'd better be using Debian).
5) Because you care about performance in a particular niche where Linux has substantial real-world performance benefits over OS X.
6) You're so used to Linux's user interface that it would be too difficult for you to switch.
7) You actually think Linux's user interface is nicer than OS X (since they both offer the same choice of shells, this comes down to GUI preference).
I really can't think of any other reasons that make any sense--if you can, please reply and elaborate. Now, to the analysis.
It's pretty clear that the reasons given above are valid only for computer geeks. Normal people don't care about (0 - 5), (6) is obviously not applicable, and I have yet to meet a reasonable person who claims (7) holds true for "average" users. There's nothing wrong with this--being better than Windows for a lower price is a big accomplishment--but why imply that Linux is something it's not?
Linux is a great OS for many people whose alternative is Windows, and for geeks. It's not a good replacement for Mac OS X.
As an alternative ad that plays on the same themes, have PC as a guy, and have him break up with his girlfriend Vista because she's too demanding. PC sees Mac OS X (woman), and tries to hit on her, but is shot down because he's "not her type" and she "doesn't think they'd be compatible". Linux walks in, and she and PC hit it off. This would communicate that you can use your existing PC hardware to run Linux but not Mac OS X.
* I use Linux in the sense that everybody except Richard M Stallman uses--I mean the entire OS, in a generic sense that does not specify a particular distribution, rather than just the kernel.
You are far more likely to die in a car accident than from Yellowstone erupting as a super-volcano.
The median number of volcano deaths per year is probably very low. The expected mean, on the other hand, could be enormous. Supervolcano eruptions are rare but cataclysmic events. If they go off, say, every 10,000 years, and the next one is expected to kill 100 million people directly, that's an (expected) mean death toll of 10,000 per year. Oh, and that doesn't include a potential famine from the loss of farmland.
You should fear a sedentary life style and tobacco a lot more than volcanoes.
True, because you can control your lifestyle.
Ground mats are nice, but you can live without them.
Not if you're sleeping in cold conditions. A sleeping bag's down or synthetic fill will compress underneath your bodyweight and provide almost no insulation. That's what the pad is for--insulating you from the ground. Some sleeping bag manufacturers, such as Big Agnes, have taken to eliminating the down in the bottom of the bag (to save weight), and just providing a pocket for a ground pad. The original poster may be asking about traveling-around-Europe type backpacking, in which case this is irrelevant, or he may be planning to visit colder climates and sleep outdoors, in which case your advice could kill him.
In fact, most of the "high tech" junk that the yuppie backpacking places like REI and Any Mountain sells are just that: junk.
Some of the stuff they sell is unnecessary, but much of it is actually pretty good gear if you know where and how to use it. Their market is hikers and wilderness-backpackers, not Europe-backpackers, so that may be why it looks unnecessary to you.
I am also a physicist. And while I obey the second law, biology does things with it that most physicists would think are abhorent. This is why Biology is a separate field than thermodynamics and physics.
You are a sorry excuse for a physicist if you don't believe the second law governs biology. When I was teaching thermodynamics to undergrads, I would have docked serious marks for that. Either New Mexico Tech's graduate stat mech course really sucks, or you didn't have a decent undergraduate thermodynamics course, or--most likely--both.
The idea of the calorie is fundamentally flawed.
Calories are well-defined units of energy, just like Joules or electron-volts or BTUs. Do you think the idea of energy is flawed?
This concept is based on how many BTU's are given off by the oxidation of a particular substance. Why is this flawed? Because it isn't a measure of all the various metabolic pathways that substance may or may not go through.
The caloric content of food is measured by oxidizing it, converting it from its initial state to a particular final state. No matter what pathway it takes from initial state to final state, if you count all the energy released, it will be the same. Since we know that, for instance, carbohydrates + O2 --> CO2 + H2O (leaving out the ratios), we can come up with good caloric content estimates that apply for everybody. Some people might generate more waste heat than others when metabolizing the food, but they can't be more than 100% efficient (by the First Law of Thermodynamics).
Again, the kilocalorie is only the amount of energy given off by a substances reaction with oxygen. So, the same substance that gave 100 kilocalories (we usually just call them calories) in a pure oxidation reaction, may upon entering the body be immediatly converted to something else, say a fat molecule, and not make those 100 calories immediatly availiable to the organism that consumed it.
True, but we also know the caloric density of fat (9 Cal / g for pure fat), so we can estimate the resulting weight gain (which I did in my original post).
Everyone seems to want to simplefy the complexities of an individuals metabolism so that they can condemn other for not being the perfect weight or size.
I wasn't condemning anyone except the OP for being an idiot, and now you for being a bad physicist. The OP can be forgiven to some degree for not being a scientist, but you have absolutely no excuse. You either need to do some serious remedial studying, or get the hell out of the field. Go pray to the ghosts of Clausius, Kelvin, and Nernst for forgiveness and wisdom. Whatever you do, please don't try to teach.
Afterall, if obesity can be put into terms so simple as the second law of thermodynamics, then it should be simple for everyone to overcome.
Obesity IS governed by the laws of thermodynamics, or else we could build perpetual motion machines out of fat people. When you build one, I'll believe you that biology is exempt from the laws of physics.
But life and the metabolic pathway will not be shoehorned into an overly simplistic explanation just because we want the problem to go away.
Thermodynamics does not explain appetite, relative efficiencies of different people's metabolisms, or many other factors contributing to obesity. It does put some fundamental limits on things, though.
You are being needlessly inflammatory, and posting from a position of ignorance. Her calorie intake was documented EXACTLY as I stated. Over a period of six months, she gained roughly 35 pounds, while eating approximately 300 calories per day. Those are the facts. The fact that you do not like those facts does not change reality.
I am a physicist, and what you are claiming is highly implausible to the point of being what we men of science term utter bullshit. Allow me to explain:
1. In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
2. Let's say she really is eating only 300 Calories a day (54,000 Cal in 6 months), and that she gained 35 pounds in six months. Normally, a pound of body fat contains about 3,500 Calories (pure fat is 9 Cal / g, but some of that pound is water). 35 lb X 3,500 Cal / lb = 122,500 Cal, which is 68,500 Calories more than she ate! (Never mind that a person typically burns somewhat over a thousand Calories a day at rest.)
3. This leaves a few possibilities:
a. The weight she gained was mostly water. Possible, but retaining water isn't true obesity.
b. She has a freak mutation that allows her to perform photosynthesis.
c. She has a freak mutation that has caused her body to grow a Stirling engine inside of her, and she was in thermal contact with hot and cold reservoirs with which the Stirling engine could exchange energy, thus allowing her to convert atmospheric CO2 and water into sugars, etc.
d. Some of the most fundamental and firmly held laws of physics are wrong.
e. You're wrong.
Those are the facts. The fact that you do not like those facts does not change reality.
Anyway, I hope I made things a little clearer than mud. Sorry for the confusion and the wasted bandwidth.
That does really clear things up, and I agree with just about everything you said. In particular, I also see computer science as a branch of mathematics.