So, clicking through to the article, then to the survey, reveals that only 224 respondents replied to the question they are using, of which six chose "just a political attack." So the lede in the article, that "nearly 71% of 250 physicians" said something, is indeed wrong, that was 159 physicians, which is 63.6% of 250.
But given the source (a political advocacy group, not a medical one) who would be surprised?
Well, at the time Obama was born, a child born of a single citizen parent was not automatically a citizen. The parent needed to meet several requirements for time of residency, and Obama's mother did not (indeed, could not, since she was too young to have been a resident for long enough).
Now, since he was born in Hawaii, this is moot. But it does legally matter that he was born in Hawaii, and not elsewhere.
As of this morning, Funcoland, where I am employed (and by extension, Gamestop, Software Etc., and Babbages, who are owned by the same corporation) have had no official notice of a change or relaxation of the November 18th street date.
However, if true, this would not be the first time that Nintendo made only a half-hearted effort to hold retailers to a street date. Pokemon Gold and Silver were distributed with a "Suggested Street Date," but Nintendo reps made it clear that units could be sold as soon as they were shipped.
--
gnfnrf
Re:But you PROMISED me...
on
Review: A.I.
·
· Score: 2
Demand your money back. Clearly you have been defrauded.
Seriously, it's not that hard to just not read Katz if you don't want to.
At extremely high velocities, air enters a ramjet combustion chamber too fast for efficient thrust to be generated. In a scramjet, vanes slow the air down before it reaches the combustion chamber, allowing operation at higher velocities. This is the opposite of what a turbojet does, where the fan speeds the air up entering the combustion chamber.
It is my understanding of the situation that Patrick "solved" the challenge by exploiting the fact that multiple files store more implicit data in the filesystem than a single file does. I believe the only such data he used was the EOF.
This is considered "cheating" because he used 220 EOFs that are not counted in the filesize.
So, my question is this. If a contestant submits a single compressed file and a single decompressor file which are just 1 byte under the original file, does Mike void the entry because of the extra filesystem space of two files? If not, why not? If so, shouldn't the rules say that specifically, as two is the minimum total number of files one can submit?
This is a problem with the projector, not a problem with the film. 35 mm film is exposed on more surface than is visible within the frame lines on the camera, or intended to be shown to audiences. It is the responsibility of the projectionist to fit the correct frame attachment to the projector to block out the unintended, unused, edges of the film.
If this was not done in your case, it is the fault of the theater, and you should ask them for a refund.
I find it interesting that the article attacks the non-standard positioning of the controller ports (on the top near the back of one side) for "asthetic" reasons. I suspect that decision was made for an entirely different purpose.
As anyone who has tried to put a console system on top of a TV knows, there is a serious problem. The cables for the controller hang in front of the TV. I can only assume that the placement of the ports is an attempt to avoid this problem, though the guy on the opposite side is still probably screwed.
The solution, if you really need a set TOP box, is to have a single, short cable that runs to a secondary controller port box, which goes UNDER the TV. I don't think any other configuration will work.
Just my random musings. Continue debating the future of Sega now.
--
gnfnrf
The limited release paradigm
on
The Pledge
·
· Score: 2
While you do have a valid point, you are failing to grasp an important aspect of the "limited release" or "slow rollout" film marketing strategy.
It is actually possible, and perhaps likely, that medium sized town residents will be LESS likely to see a film like The Pledge if it has a traditional 1000+ screen debut, rather than a slow rollout. The problem is, when a film opens on that many screens, if its initial audience is small, the theater chains pull it as soon as they can and replace it with True Independence Godzilla Harbor's Angels as soon as possible. Then, even though it was showing in PodunkVille for a week, it is GONE, and if you didn't get off your ass that one week, you missed it. And you didn't know before hand that it would be better/different from True Independence Godzilla Harbor's Angels, so you missed it. Time to wait for the video.
In a slow rollout, however, the studio invests less money, because they need to market the film in fewer areas and make fewer prints. This means that the film can be a financial success with a smaller absolute gross. When a film is showing on half the screens in an area, each venue does twice as much business. This keeps the film around a while longer, and those prints that were made for the initial limited release start being moved around the country to various places as the "big town" audiences fade. NOW, when it comes to PodunkVille, everyone who might be interested has heard of it, and it can probably stay a few weeks, and more people overall can see it.
It doesn't always happen this way, but there have been many films that have achieved modest success using this strategy. I have had the opportunity to see films in a small city (Rochester, NY) that I would have missed had they recieved "large" releases.
--
gnfnrf
The $199 is for the commercial listings only. Not the best of worlds, but much better than charging for any new additions to the index. And very different from what e4 implies.
--
gnfnrf
I'd just like to point out to those who want to engage in the "do black holes exist?" debate, that there are two questions.
1.) Do massive objects exist that collapse beyond their own Schwartzchild radii, thus forming an event horizon?
The answer to this one is very probably yes. Neutron stars maintain hydrostatic equilibrium by the counterbalance of the gravitational inward pressure and the outward pressure of neutron degeneracy. After a certain (debatable, but between 2 and 10 solar masses) point, gravtity overcomes the neutron degeneracy and the star collapses under it's Schwartzchild radius. At this point, it can be called a "black hole" because the escape velocity at the surface of the object, whatever it is, is greater than the speed of light. Unless some process prevents neutron stars from growing by matter accretion past a certain point (and Type Ia supernovae seem to contradict this) or another source of outward pressure than neutron degeneracy exists, this process can and probably has happened.
2.) Once collapsed, do such objects become mathematical singularities within the event horizon?
This is where all of the scary stuff happens, with the math predicting a space coordinate rotating into time, infinite density, etc. The answer to this question is, WE DON'T KNOW, and furthermore, IT DOESN'T MATTER. A black hole will look exactly the same if it is a singularity or just REALLY DENSE.
We talk about black holes as singularities because we don't know of any outward force that can overcome the neutron degeneracy pressure at any point, but once under the event horizon, it doesn't matter if there is a new hydrostatic equilibrium, because it does not effect the rest of the universe.
As for the "evidence" issue, astronomers have observed a handful of massive X-ray sources in tight binary systems (the mass is found by the period of the system) which are really probably black holes. From earth, that is probably the best we can do.
And in case you wonder what my credentials are, I just finished an in-depth course in astrophysics.
--
gnfnrf
Lady Luck doesn't need a memory for the effect that the original poster described to occur.
Imagine the "success rating" of a mission is randomly determined by flipping a coin 10 times. The more heads, the better the mission went. After a "5" mission, what are the chances that the next mission will be better, as opposed to worse? Even (excluding when it is neither).
Now how about after a "1" mission. The ONLY worse result is 10 tails in a row, which has a probability of roughly.0001. The probability that the next result will be the same is.0002, and EVERYTHING else is better. That's a.9997 chance that things will improve.
The Skeptical Enquirer did an article on the regression effect for their March/April 99 issue, discussing the observed phenomenon that male hunk stars career's take a dip after appearing on major magazine covers, among others.
The article is well worth reading, and makes it clear that Lady Luck doesn't need a memory for the regression effect to occur.
Bruce Perens clearly knows about this, considering that he linked to it in the second paragraph of his posting. The issue is that his program is not among them, and, if I understand it correctly, could not be distributed with other, closed code under the terms of the GPL anyway (that being what the LGPL is for).
That was an interesting analysis of Christian beliefs and practices, certainly, but I think you missed the point that Katz was trying to make.
It doesn't matter what Christian beliefs on the Second Coming, Armageddon, the Apocalypse, or whatever you want to call it really are. All that matters is that the popular perception of a Christian "End of Days" is that it should show up pretty soon now. Movie makers (with the noted exception of Dogma's Kevin Smith) are not theologians.
All that I read from Katz' comment was that, once the millenial time passes, popular interest in dramatic portrayals of apocalyptic events will fade, because popular interest in or belief in it will decline. Or, an apocalyptic event will have happened, rendering the making of movies moot. Just because it doesn't happen on New Years 2000 doesn't mean it is never going to, but it does mean that people will stop anticipating it quite so specifically.
This does not show that Katz has a poor understanding of Christianity, is anti-christian, or is attempting to foist an anti-christian philosophy or worldview on slashdot readers. I fail to understand why you chose to include a lengthy and irrelevent explanation of one version of Christian doctrine. Katz was talking about MOVIES.
gnfnrf -- If I could think of something wittier to put here, BOY would you be laughing now.
Posting this article on a website was clearly a tactical error. Armed with this new knowledge, thousands of geeks will swarm the singles bars looking for non-clothing adjusting, non-giggly, head and shoulders high, affirmative stating women.
What if Bill Gates reads slashdot? I think this article is unfairly written, because it assumes that it's addessing the 5.99999 billion inhabitants of the earth who are NOT excessively rich. What about the neglected minority, the.000001 billion who are? Where is THEIR Q&A? Is this discrimination? Could they sue? :P
gnfnrf
One Time Pads and cypher technology
on
The Code Book
·
· Score: 1
It seems to me that, while all the attention in modern cryptography is on public-key and large-prime encryption, that only applies to a new breed of encrypter. All of the groups who have used codes throughout history (governments, intelligence agencies, etc) have quietly and firmly switched to the One Time Pad system, and completely ended the entire codebreaking/codemaking cycle.
(For those who don't know, a One Time Pad is an encryption system in which a given (private) key is used once then discarded, giving codebreakers no sample to analyse for patterns)
As far as I can tell, as long as the key is uncompromised, the OTP system is totally uncrackable. There is just nothing you can do against a key where each permutation is only applied once. Maybe this is why the NSA has been paying so much attention to private citizens, because it no longer has a chance to break government codes?
Or is there an approach to cracking the OTP system that hasn't been considered?
Slashdot Mirror
So, clicking through to the article, then to the survey, reveals that only 224 respondents replied to the question they are using, of which six chose "just a political attack." So the lede in the article, that "nearly 71% of 250 physicians" said something, is indeed wrong, that was 159 physicians, which is 63.6% of 250.
But given the source (a political advocacy group, not a medical one) who would be surprised?
It is a common term in the ... fully professional competitive video game scene. And it's faster to type than that.
It's probably a licensing thing. Sony doesn't want to pay the per-player fee on every device they sell, just every device that is activated.
Well, at the time Obama was born, a child born of a single citizen parent was not automatically a citizen. The parent needed to meet several requirements for time of residency, and Obama's mother did not (indeed, could not, since she was too young to have been a resident for long enough).
Now, since he was born in Hawaii, this is moot. But it does legally matter that he was born in Hawaii, and not elsewhere.
As of this morning, Funcoland, where I am employed (and by extension, Gamestop, Software Etc., and Babbages, who are owned by the same corporation) have had no official notice of a change or relaxation of the November 18th street date.
However, if true, this would not be the first time that Nintendo made only a half-hearted effort to hold retailers to a street date. Pokemon Gold and Silver were distributed with a "Suggested Street Date," but Nintendo reps made it clear that units could be sold as soon as they were shipped.
--
gnfnrf
Demand your money back. Clearly you have been defrauded.
Seriously, it's not that hard to just not read Katz if you don't want to.
--
gnfnrf
The simple version.
At extremely high velocities, air enters a ramjet combustion chamber too fast for efficient thrust to be generated. In a scramjet, vanes slow the air down before it reaches the combustion chamber, allowing operation at higher velocities. This is the opposite of what a turbojet does, where the fan speeds the air up entering the combustion chamber.
--
gnfnrf
It is my understanding of the situation that Patrick "solved" the challenge by exploiting the fact that multiple files store more implicit data in the filesystem than a single file does. I believe the only such data he used was the EOF.
This is considered "cheating" because he used 220 EOFs that are not counted in the filesize.
So, my question is this. If a contestant submits a single compressed file and a single decompressor file which are just 1 byte under the original file, does Mike void the entry because of the extra filesystem space of two files? If not, why not? If so, shouldn't the rules say that specifically, as two is the minimum total number of files one can submit?
--
gnfnrf
This is a problem with the projector, not a problem with the film. 35 mm film is exposed on more surface than is visible within the frame lines on the camera, or intended to be shown to audiences. It is the responsibility of the projectionist to fit the correct frame attachment to the projector to block out the unintended, unused, edges of the film.
If this was not done in your case, it is the fault of the theater, and you should ask them for a refund.
--
gnfnrf
2001-03-22 09:18:51
And I have absolutely no good reason to think so. But I can enter the contest anyway.
I find it interesting that the article attacks the non-standard positioning of the controller ports (on the top near the back of one side) for "asthetic" reasons. I suspect that decision was made for an entirely different purpose.
As anyone who has tried to put a console system on top of a TV knows, there is a serious problem. The cables for the controller hang in front of the TV. I can only assume that the placement of the ports is an attempt to avoid this problem, though the guy on the opposite side is still probably screwed.
The solution, if you really need a set TOP box, is to have a single, short cable that runs to a secondary controller port box, which goes UNDER the TV. I don't think any other configuration will work.
Just my random musings. Continue debating the future of Sega now.
--
gnfnrf
While you do have a valid point, you are failing to grasp an important aspect of the "limited release" or "slow rollout" film marketing strategy.
It is actually possible, and perhaps likely, that medium sized town residents will be LESS likely to see a film like The Pledge if it has a traditional 1000+ screen debut, rather than a slow rollout. The problem is, when a film opens on that many screens, if its initial audience is small, the theater chains pull it as soon as they can and replace it with True Independence Godzilla Harbor's Angels as soon as possible. Then, even though it was showing in PodunkVille for a week, it is GONE, and if you didn't get off your ass that one week, you missed it. And you didn't know before hand that it would be better/different from True Independence Godzilla Harbor's Angels, so you missed it. Time to wait for the video.
In a slow rollout, however, the studio invests less money, because they need to market the film in fewer areas and make fewer prints. This means that the film can be a financial success with a smaller absolute gross. When a film is showing on half the screens in an area, each venue does twice as much business. This keeps the film around a while longer, and those prints that were made for the initial limited release start being moved around the country to various places as the "big town" audiences fade. NOW, when it comes to PodunkVille, everyone who might be interested has heard of it, and it can probably stay a few weeks, and more people overall can see it.
It doesn't always happen this way, but there have been many films that have achieved modest success using this strategy. I have had the opportunity to see films in a small city (Rochester, NY) that I would have missed had they recieved "large" releases.
--
gnfnrf
The $199 is for the commercial listings only. Not the best of worlds, but much better than charging for any new additions to the index. And very different from what e4 implies.
--
gnfnrf
I'd just like to point out to those who want to engage in the "do black holes exist?" debate, that there are two questions.
1.) Do massive objects exist that collapse beyond their own Schwartzchild radii, thus forming an event horizon?
The answer to this one is very probably yes. Neutron stars maintain hydrostatic equilibrium by the counterbalance of the gravitational inward pressure and the outward pressure of neutron degeneracy. After a certain (debatable, but between 2 and 10 solar masses) point, gravtity overcomes the neutron degeneracy and the star collapses under it's Schwartzchild radius. At this point, it can be called a "black hole" because the escape velocity at the surface of the object, whatever it is, is greater than the speed of light. Unless some process prevents neutron stars from growing by matter accretion past a certain point (and Type Ia supernovae seem to contradict this) or another source of outward pressure than neutron degeneracy exists, this process can and probably has happened.
2.) Once collapsed, do such objects become mathematical singularities within the event horizon?
This is where all of the scary stuff happens, with the math predicting a space coordinate rotating into time, infinite density, etc. The answer to this question is, WE DON'T KNOW, and furthermore, IT DOESN'T MATTER. A black hole will look exactly the same if it is a singularity or just REALLY DENSE.
We talk about black holes as singularities because we don't know of any outward force that can overcome the neutron degeneracy pressure at any point, but once under the event horizon, it doesn't matter if there is a new hydrostatic equilibrium, because it does not effect the rest of the universe.
As for the "evidence" issue, astronomers have observed a handful of massive X-ray sources in tight binary systems (the mass is found by the period of the system) which are really probably black holes. From earth, that is probably the best we can do.
And in case you wonder what my credentials are, I just finished an in-depth course in astrophysics.
--
gnfnrf
I believe these are videos of the Quake Done Quicker run, not the Quake Done Quick With a Vengeance run.
gnfnrf
Lady Luck doesn't need a memory for the effect that the original poster described to occur.
.0001. The probability that the next result will be the same is .0002, and EVERYTHING else is better. That's a .9997 chance that things will improve.
Imagine the "success rating" of a mission is randomly determined by flipping a coin 10 times. The more heads, the better the mission went. After a "5" mission, what are the chances that the next mission will be better, as opposed to worse? Even (excluding when it is neither).
Now how about after a "1" mission. The ONLY worse result is 10 tails in a row, which has a probability of roughly
The Skeptical Enquirer did an article on the regression effect for their March/April 99 issue, discussing the observed phenomenon that male hunk stars career's take a dip after appearing on major magazine covers, among others.
The article is well worth reading, and makes it clear that Lady Luck doesn't need a memory for the regression effect to occur.
gnfnrf
Bruce Perens clearly knows about this, considering that he linked to it in the second paragraph of his posting. The issue is that his program is not among them, and, if I understand it correctly, could not be distributed with other, closed code under the terms of the GPL anyway (that being what the LGPL is for).
That was an interesting analysis of Christian beliefs and practices, certainly, but I think you missed the point that Katz was trying to make.
It doesn't matter what Christian beliefs on the Second Coming, Armageddon, the Apocalypse, or whatever you want to call it really are. All that matters is that the popular perception of a Christian "End of Days" is that it should show up pretty soon now. Movie makers (with the noted exception of Dogma's Kevin Smith) are not theologians.
All that I read from Katz' comment was that, once the millenial time passes, popular interest in dramatic portrayals of apocalyptic events will fade, because popular interest in or belief in it will decline. Or, an apocalyptic event will have happened, rendering the making of movies moot. Just because it doesn't happen on New Years 2000 doesn't mean it is never going to, but it does mean that people will stop anticipating it quite so specifically.
This does not show that Katz has a poor understanding of Christianity, is anti-christian, or is attempting to foist an anti-christian philosophy or worldview on slashdot readers. I fail to understand why you chose to include a lengthy and irrelevent explanation of one version of Christian doctrine. Katz was talking about MOVIES.
gnfnrf
--
If I could think of something wittier to put here, BOY would you be laughing now.
Posting this article on a website was clearly a tactical error. Armed with this new knowledge, thousands of geeks will swarm the singles bars looking for non-clothing adjusting, non-giggly, head and shoulders high, affirmative stating women.
Or maybe that's just what they WANT us to do.
gnfnrf
What if Bill Gates reads slashdot? I think this article is unfairly written, because it assumes that it's addessing the 5.99999 billion inhabitants of the earth who are NOT excessively rich. What about the neglected minority, the .000001 billion who are? Where is THEIR Q&A? Is this discrimination? Could they sue?
:P
gnfnrf
It seems to me that, while all the attention in modern cryptography is on public-key and large-prime encryption, that only applies to a new breed of encrypter. All of the groups who have used codes throughout history (governments, intelligence agencies, etc) have quietly and firmly switched to the One Time Pad system, and completely ended the entire codebreaking/codemaking cycle.
(For those who don't know, a One Time Pad is an encryption system in which a given (private) key is used once then discarded, giving codebreakers no sample to analyse for patterns)
As far as I can tell, as long as the key is uncompromised, the OTP system is totally uncrackable. There is just nothing you can do against a key where each permutation is only applied once. Maybe this is why the NSA has been paying so much attention to private citizens, because it no longer has a chance to break government codes?
Or is there an approach to cracking the OTP system that hasn't been considered?
gnfnrf