note the lack of the hyphen--Don Knuth has a good linguistic analysis of why email is hyphenless somewhere on his site
It's here . This is actually an afterthought on a page about how Knuth quit using email entirely in 1990. Pretty interesting.
A note on email versus e-mail
Newly coined nonce words are often spelled with a hyphen, but the
hyphen disappears when the words become widely used. For example, people
used to write ``non-zero'' and ``soft-ware'' instead of ``nonzero''
and ``software''; the same trend has occurred for hundreds of
other words. Thus it's high time for everybody to stop using the archaic
spelling ``e-mail''. Think of how many keystrokes you will save in
your lifetime if you stop now! The form ``email'' has been well
established in England for several years, so I am amazed to see
Americans being overly conservative in this regard. (Of course,
``email'' has been a familiar word in France much longer than in
England --- but for an entirely different reason.)
The birds on the wire closest to the new bird have to shift the most.. the birds on the end of the wire don't have to shift at all. I want to be able to sort lists the same way --- it'd be much faster.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. It couldn't speed up sorting in a very meaningful way. In a comparison-based model (which must be used for general sorting, barring assumptions such as integer keys within a known range or a known distribution of keys), it is easy to see that Omega(n lg n) comparisons must be made. [Warning--elementary algorithms ahead] This is by a simple decision tree argument -- each comparison has two possible results (< or >=), and there are n! permutations of the input, each of which could be the sorted order. With a branching factor of 2 and n! leaves, the height of the decision tree must be at least lg n^n = n lg n. So some path to a leaf must require at least n lg n comparisons. Thus, comparison-based sorting must take Omega(n lg n) time, independent of the strategy of moving keys around in memory. Even if nothing was ever moved in memory, but the algorithm only identified the correct permutation, it would still take Omega(n lg n) time. An intelligent data structure or memory model could speed up the run time by some additive amount asymptotically less than (n lg n) or reduce the constants hidden by asymptotic notation, but this does not affect the asymptotic run time.
On the other hand, there is some parallelism in the situation you describe -- each bird is determining whether it should move (and moving) simultaneously. If we can perform more than one comparison per time step, then clearly we can sort in o(n lg n) time. But I don't think this is really what you were getting at, and parallel computing is not a novel concept.
All right. QuickTime is not the movie player application, it is a set of libraries and an API. The player is just another application that calls them (and happens to be distributed with them). With the API, any programmer could create a Windows movie player app with standard widgets. Several such 3rd-party players exist on the Macintosh. So why don't you write one, or commission one. Or you could cry about it.
I bet Steve Jobs (Apple was the first "one-click" licensee) feels stupid now, at any rate.
Why would he? He wanted the feature on the website, and the only way legally to have it was to license it. Obviously, he thought the feature was worth whatever fees they are paying. If the patent is invalidated, Apple won't have to pay Amazon any more, so all the better! (Although they may have to start paying OpenTV if they want to keep using it).
What kind of an explanation is "a big boom just HAPPENED from some stuff that came from nowhere". Sorry, I do not recall any scientific theory being confirmed using "something came from nothing" logic.
This is a strawman. Evolution does not deal at all with the beginnings of the universe. It deals with changes in populations over time. Look here: What is Evolution?
I go to Penn State, and I live in Beaver Hall, which isn't that far from Beaver Stadium, and East Beaver Avenue. Everyone makes fun of me when I tell them I live in Beaver Hall, oh well, I don't care (and I am not kidding either)....
Well, being an MIT grad student, I actually am a beaver. So beat that.
If the primary goal of this legislation is to stop in-dorm procreation, it's clear cut that this is a very narrow-minded way of doing it. Two counter-examples can be provided... Same-gender intimate partners
Not to be pedantic, but I don't think they have to worry about procreation by same-gender intimate partners. Unless they can get David Crosby to donate some sperm or something...
Hm -- do you actually know anything about Latin? I would suggest you check Tom Christiansen's detailed page on this topic. Maybe it will help you avoid "shooting off your mouth" in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
A note on email versus e-mail
Newly coined nonce words are often spelled with a hyphen, but the hyphen disappears when the words become widely used. For example, people used to write ``non-zero'' and ``soft-ware'' instead of ``nonzero'' and ``software''; the same trend has occurred for hundreds of other words. Thus it's high time for everybody to stop using the archaic spelling ``e-mail''. Think of how many keystrokes you will save in your lifetime if you stop now! The form ``email'' has been well established in England for several years, so I am amazed to see Americans being overly conservative in this regard. (Of course, ``email'' has been a familiar word in France much longer than in England --- but for an entirely different reason.)
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Those guys are called the blue man group. They put on quite a good show, actually.
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I'm not sure what you're getting at. It couldn't speed up sorting in a very meaningful way. In a comparison-based model (which must be used for general sorting, barring assumptions such as integer keys within a known range or a known distribution of keys), it is easy to see that Omega(n lg n) comparisons must be made. [Warning--elementary algorithms ahead] This is by a simple decision tree argument -- each comparison has two possible results (< or >=), and there are n! permutations of the input, each of which could be the sorted order. With a branching factor of 2 and n! leaves, the height of the decision tree must be at least lg n^n = n lg n. So some path to a leaf must require at least n lg n comparisons. Thus, comparison-based sorting must take Omega(n lg n) time, independent of the strategy of moving keys around in memory. Even if nothing was ever moved in memory, but the algorithm only identified the correct permutation, it would still take Omega(n lg n) time. An intelligent data structure or memory model could speed up the run time by some additive amount asymptotically less than (n lg n) or reduce the constants hidden by asymptotic notation, but this does not affect the asymptotic run time.
On the other hand, there is some parallelism in the situation you describe -- each bird is determining whether it should move (and moving) simultaneously. If we can perform more than one comparison per time step, then clearly we can sort in o(n lg n) time. But I don't think this is really what you were getting at, and parallel computing is not a novel concept.
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Yes, it was number ten. But it should have been one.
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Judging by all these comments, I'd say that what he wrote was indeed rather inciteful.
This is a strawman. Evolution does not deal at all with the beginnings of the universe. It deals with changes in populations over time. Look here: What is Evolution?
Well, being an MIT grad student, I actually am a beaver. So beat that.
Go Beavers!
Not to be pedantic, but I don't think they have to worry about procreation by same-gender intimate partners. Unless they can get David Crosby to donate some sperm or something...
Hm -- do you actually know anything about Latin? I would suggest you check Tom Christiansen's detailed page on this topic. Maybe it will help you avoid "shooting off your mouth" in the future.