Subjective view follows (hilarity ensues)
on
Is Math A Sport?
·
· Score: 1
"Ludwig Wittgenstein, who famously addressed the question we're discussing in his Philosophical Investigations:
Consider for example the proceedings that we call "games." I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? Don't say: "There must be something common, or they would not be called 'games' "but look and see whether there is anything common to all.
(...)
How should we explain to someone what a game is? I imagine that we should describe games to him, and we might add: "This and similar things are called games." And do we know any more about it ourselves? "
I would say - IMH(umble)O - that a game is an activity governed by rules and it follows that games is the plural. Thus board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games are bound to gether. Things resembling games, but without rules, is play, like the children do.
As for sport that's more fishy, it is at least a subset of games, but... I would say math's not a sport. However I would say bridge and chess is. This I base on that the challenge is not static. There's a new set of problems for competition (and I don't see it as as the altering track in cycling for instance) and that is the determing point in my mind. However it is a competition and it's great to have large competitions in math.
As for olympics I agree with the IOC. The olympics is based on the old greek athletic games and races.
SOT: when I think about it, Slashdot can be more of a sport, judged much like figure skating. It's about getting you're point across in the limited attention the article enjoys and at least I often find myself browsing multiple windows to collect facts (or at least something that seems like facts.) What about Slashdot Olympics?
Slacware does have package managing, just not dependencie management. pkg-tools keeps track of all installed files in/var/log/packages and there should be some sort of md5 sum checking (however I'm can't reach a Slackware system here at work so I can't verify that point.) The packaging system is IMHO excellent and I by time you start wondering why you ever thought dependency system are nessecary.
I use Slackware 10 on my laptop and have used all versions since 8.1. It is the best distro for the technically minded people who like to be in control. Sure it's nice to have programs write config files for you, but I often find more mess than hand tuned. Slackware leaves the control (as an exercise) to the user and if you have to tune anything (it works out of the box) you'll only do it once and probably learn a little too.
Another thing some people seem to dislike is the lack of strongly enforced package management like RPM or apt. However this is absolutely in line with Slackware's no-fuss, user-in-control filosophy. With no dependency checking source and binary packages walk hand in hand and impossible legacy dependacies are a non-issue. Sure the package base could be better, but much can be found at certain repositories (like http://www.linuxpackages.net and some times at the developers site.
OT: I absolutely hate people who seem to think.tgz is just a substitution for.tar.gz, it's not!
(1)Insurance and (2)backup for when shit hits the fan. And if you don't want your data to end up in the wrong hands keep it (3)encrypted. (Password + maybe separate crypto key on a thumb drive.)
My sister recently got lifted for her video cam. It was between her feet but someone distracted her for a moment and it was gone. So to avoid getting mugged it may seem that (4)always holding on to your things may help. (E.g. when you sit down; keep your things between your legs and keep the handles in your hands or around your wrist.)
You're allowed in with a regular cell phone at all? In Norway, AFAIK, you leave your cell at the door due to tempest security. Apparently even an switched off cell phone can be tapped.
(Leaving your phone at the door was taught at a security course and has been implemented at the places I've been.)
This reminds me of a project in Norway. In relation to the upcoming UMTS rollout here, Telenor - the largest Norwegian telco - is introducing something they call Mobile Eye Phone. It's basically just a camera, microphone and earplugs connected via UMTS to a remote guide. He gets a live video feed and can assist the blind person in navigating in new places. I've seen this on TV tested with a blind person taking his 6 year old daugther on a trip out of the country and it seemed to work really well. Given that the person only need to place a call when he need help navigating.
A combination of the two technology would create a fallback when this new technology fail. And it will fail, just look at OCR.
I don't really think that's an acronym. Google defines it (or rather; finds it defined as:) (n) A word formed by joining the initial letters of a series of words. (Emphasis mine.) Now FGTRGDI doesn't feel or sound like a word to me. It's just an abbreviation. A word should have no more than two consonants in a row, three only as an exception. Anything more than that and it'll only pass as an acronym in the Welsh language. However... maybe... VABULI could work (Viruses Are Bad, Use LInux.)
Yes the very same science that they refer to in the article. Austrailian scientists with computer simulations. This however is the result of real-world experience and experiment. And they concluded the same.
I think you need to look up the word profit. These are sold at less than current retail price and you can bet both MacMall and Apple (if they did the refurbishing) are getting their piece of the cake so VT will probably only regain a part of the initial cost of the system, and they are probably spending that money, plus a little extra on the new system. Which in turn will benefit VT as an research establishment (probably not very benefitial for most _students_ though.) I'm guessing they wouldn't have been able to get the new system had these machines been distributed around the university or even sold at knock down rates to freshmen. (That had to be some knock down to get that amount sold to freshmen.)
I'm sorry but the formula you introdused only states that momentum is preserved, not energy. Also your formula true for all collisions, 'perfect' or not, also when kinetic energy isn't preserved. The grandfather is however only vaguely on target when addressing the question of staying inside the gravitational field of a comet. The thing to address is energy, not momentum.
It's all about escape velocity. The mass needed to keep a person on an object or in an orbit comes down to the speed the person can obtain by its own force. (Jumping or pushing or something.) Since an object like this is evacuated there is little to slow things down so should the get a little push in a direction, it will have a relatively large impact.
Maybe he was hired by a CS guy who actually knew that C+ is a programming language and that anyone that knows something as exotic as C+ must be quite a hacker.
I've heard about it from section 1.4 (p10) of Bjarne Stroustup's "The C++ Programming language, Third edition." Furthermore it is briefly mentioned here and here (with an unreliable account of the evolution of c++ which according to Stroustrup is unrelated to C+.)
Here's a list that I believe is complete. It contains both broadband, DSL and dial-up prices. The first column is the ISP and subscription type, then there's the one-time connection fee, the next is the monthly fee, then there's a billing fee, start fee, running fee (per minute) and then there's a fee for getting nessecary equipment (mostly for ISDN.) All prices are in NOK. (1U$D ~ 6.8NOK)
The list's from the Norwegian Post and Telecommunication Authority which all norwegian telecom operators are required to submitt prices to.
I've got 5 liters of 50-80% methanol sitting on the floor and handle it quite often when flying model airplanes. And yes it's toxic and you can go blind, but only if you drink a reasonable amount (or maybe get it into your eye.) However I routinly spill it on my skin and even blow suck on tubes that carry methanol and it's never made me sick. So unless someone drinks it, it's not more dangerous than, say using a pair of scissors. You have to do something stupid to get seriously injured, not much more dangerous than gas I suppose (probably a bit more toxic.)
That sounds ridiculus. I can't in my wildest imagination think that people from USA are allowed to slack more at work. For one thing, USA seem to have poor legal protection for workers compared to most industrialized countries. Europeans have normally aquired good protection through a socialistic history. For example; in many countries lunch-breaks are governed by law to protect the workers rights. The article clearly states that many workers in USA doesn't get a proper lunch-break.
And by the way; would you really rather spend those 5 freecell-playing, slashdot-checking hours confined to your work place or at home free to do absoulutely anything you want?
To me, she seems to make some sense. I know software patents are bad on slashdot, but maybe that's because slashdot's only familiar with the insane US patent system. She actually makes it clear in the article that she doesn't want a US system.
I don't think software patents are evil by nature, it can be applicable in a few cases. However I see a problem of patents limiting the users legal rights to contents. Say firm M gets a patent on a fantastic text compression algorithm which they use as a part of a de-facto file format that stores formatted text. Now developer S can't legally develop a reader of this format to use on his operating system that isn't supported by M.
Maybe if someone could solve this problem then software patents could be feasible. Maybe - as someone else proposed here - open-source should be excempted from patents. Some sort of a patent system limited to commercial activities. Patent infridgement would be easy though with the code legally as open-source.
Btw.: "... non sequitur, solecism and faux-naivete..." gDict only knew 1.5 of those words, but I'm assuming it's a fancy way of saying anyone being pro software patents are morons. Did the poster notice that the article was pretty moderatly worded and forthcoming? Did he RTA?
If you're already searcing for E.T. and not a cure for cancer, why would you search for a cure for SARS? SARS is scary because it's new not because it's a currently uncontrollable viral disease, we've got loads of them. HIV/AIDS, TB, the common cold. Somwhere between 80% and 95% recover quite nicely from SARS, IIRC 500,000 die each year of the flue, you don't see us jumping around over that.
Disclaimier: I'm not saying SARS shouldn't be fought, all disease should, but let's all get some perspective.
(To back some of this up with a _little_ more reliable resource found through Google, look here)
Slashdot Mirror
"Ludwig Wittgenstein, who famously addressed the question we're discussing in his Philosophical Investigations:
... I would say math's not a sport. However I would say bridge and chess is. This I base on that the challenge is not static. There's a new set of problems for competition (and I don't see it as as the altering track in cycling for instance) and that is the determing point in my mind. However it is a competition and it's great to have large competitions in math.
Consider for example the proceedings that we call "games." I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? Don't say: "There must be something common, or they would not be called 'games' "but look and see whether there is anything common to all.
(...)
How should we explain to someone what a game is? I imagine that we should describe games to him, and we might add: "This and similar things are called games." And do we know any more about it ourselves?
"
I would say - IMH(umble)O - that a game is an activity governed by rules and it follows that games is the plural. Thus board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games are bound to gether. Things resembling games, but without rules, is play, like the children do.
As for sport that's more fishy, it is at least a subset of games, but
As for olympics I agree with the IOC. The olympics is based on the old greek athletic games and races.
SOT: when I think about it, Slashdot can be more of a sport, judged much like figure skating. It's about getting you're point across in the limited attention the article enjoys and at least I often find myself browsing multiple windows to collect facts (or at least something that seems like facts.) What about Slashdot Olympics?
Slacware does have package managing, just not dependencie management. pkg-tools keeps track of all installed files in /var/log/packages and there should be some sort of md5 sum checking (however I'm can't reach a Slackware system here at work so I can't verify that point.) The packaging system is IMHO excellent and I by time you start wondering why you ever thought dependency system are nessecary.
I use Slackware 10 on my laptop and have used all versions since 8.1. It is the best distro for the technically minded people who like to be in control. Sure it's nice to have programs write config files for you, but I often find more mess than hand tuned. Slackware leaves the control (as an exercise) to the user and if you have to tune anything (it works out of the box) you'll only do it once and probably learn a little too.
.tgz is just a substitution for .tar.gz, it's not!
Another thing some people seem to dislike is the lack of strongly enforced package management like RPM or apt. However this is absolutely in line with Slackware's no-fuss, user-in-control filosophy. With no dependency checking source and binary packages walk hand in hand and impossible legacy dependacies are a non-issue. Sure the package base could be better, but much can be found at certain repositories (like http://www.linuxpackages.net and some times at the developers site.
OT: I absolutely hate people who seem to think
(1)Insurance and (2)backup for when shit hits the fan. And if you don't want your data to end up in the wrong hands keep it (3)encrypted. (Password + maybe separate crypto key on a thumb drive.)
My sister recently got lifted for her video cam. It was between her feet but someone distracted her for a moment and it was gone. So to avoid getting mugged it may seem that (4)always holding on to your things may help. (E.g. when you sit down; keep your things between your legs and keep the handles in your hands or around your wrist.)
You're allowed in with a regular cell phone at all? In Norway, AFAIK, you leave your cell at the door due to tempest security. Apparently even an switched off cell phone can be tapped.
(Leaving your phone at the door was taught at a security course and has been implemented at the places I've been.)
Some time ago (in 2002) there was a story on /. linking to this Wired article which I remember as interesting. By stimulating certain areas of the brain they were trying to tap directly in to the visual center of the brain and create an image.
I also found this more recent article that predicts the technology to be avaiable in 4-5 years time.
This reminds me of a project in Norway. In relation to the upcoming UMTS rollout here, Telenor - the largest Norwegian telco - is introducing something they call Mobile Eye Phone. It's basically just a camera, microphone and earplugs connected via UMTS to a remote guide. He gets a live video feed and can assist the blind person in navigating in new places. I've seen this on TV tested with a blind person taking his 6 year old daugther on a trip out of the country and it seemed to work really well. Given that the person only need to place a call when he need help navigating.
A combination of the two technology would create a fallback when this new technology fail. And it will fail, just look at OCR.
More cryptic acronyms to the people!
... maybe ... VABULI could work (Viruses Are Bad, Use LInux.)
I don't really think that's an acronym. Google defines it (or rather; finds it defined as:) (n) A word formed by joining the initial letters of a series of words. (Emphasis mine.) Now FGTRGDI doesn't feel or sound like a word to me. It's just an abbreviation. A word should have no more than two consonants in a row, three only as an exception. Anything more than that and it'll only pass as an acronym in the Welsh language. However
Yes the very same science that they refer to in the article. Austrailian scientists with computer simulations. This however is the result of real-world experience and experiment. And they concluded the same.
I think you need to look up the word profit. These are sold at less than current retail price and you can bet both MacMall and Apple (if they did the refurbishing) are getting their piece of the cake so VT will probably only regain a part of the initial cost of the system, and they are probably spending that money, plus a little extra on the new system. Which in turn will benefit VT as an research establishment (probably not very benefitial for most _students_ though.) I'm guessing they wouldn't have been able to get the new system had these machines been distributed around the university or even sold at knock down rates to freshmen. (That had to be some knock down to get that amount sold to freshmen.)
I'm sorry but the formula you introdused only states that momentum is preserved, not energy. Also your formula true for all collisions, 'perfect' or not, also when kinetic energy isn't preserved. The grandfather is however only vaguely on target when addressing the question of staying inside the gravitational field of a comet. The thing to address is energy, not momentum.
It's all about escape velocity. The mass needed to keep a person on an object or in an orbit comes down to the speed the person can obtain by its own force. (Jumping or pushing or something.) Since an object like this is evacuated there is little to slow things down so should the get a little push in a direction, it will have a relatively large impact.
(And no, I don't care to do the math.)
Maybe he was hired by a CS guy who actually knew that C+ is a programming language and that anyone that knows something as exotic as C+ must be quite a hacker.
I've heard about it from section 1.4 (p10) of Bjarne Stroustup's "The C++ Programming language, Third edition." Furthermore it is briefly mentioned here and here (with an unreliable account of the evolution of c++ which according to Stroustrup is unrelated to C+.)
Here's a list that I believe is complete. It contains both broadband, DSL and dial-up prices. The first column is the ISP and subscription type, then there's the one-time connection fee, the next is the monthly fee, then there's a billing fee, start fee, running fee (per minute) and then there's a fee for getting nessecary equipment (mostly for ISDN.) All prices are in NOK. (1U$D ~ 6.8NOK)
The list's from the Norwegian Post and Telecommunication Authority which all norwegian telecom operators are required to submitt prices to.
(bredband = broadband)
Tin-foil reflects ... we're not stupid.
I've got 5 liters of 50-80% methanol sitting on the floor and handle it quite often when flying model airplanes. And yes it's toxic and you can go blind, but only if you drink a reasonable amount (or maybe get it into your eye.) However I routinly spill it on my skin and even blow suck on tubes that carry methanol and it's never made me sick. So unless someone drinks it, it's not more dangerous than, say using a pair of scissors. You have to do something stupid to get seriously injured, not much more dangerous than gas I suppose (probably a bit more toxic.)
Mind you, methanol may induse blindness which may be considered an advantage when having to use Windows.
That sounds ridiculus. I can't in my wildest imagination think that people from USA are allowed to slack more at work. For one thing, USA seem to have poor legal protection for workers compared to most industrialized countries. Europeans have normally aquired good protection through a socialistic history. For example; in many countries lunch-breaks are governed by law to protect the workers rights. The article clearly states that many workers in USA doesn't get a proper lunch-break.
And by the way; would you really rather spend those 5 freecell-playing, slashdot-checking hours confined to your work place or at home free to do absoulutely anything you want?
..., including $57.1 million of red ink in 2002.
It's obvious why they're going down the drain. Workers are obviously lifting red pens en masse.
Do you know anything about statistics?? This is your statistic shows the gross amount used on military while you should compare on a per capita basis.
General: budget / population = military spending per capita
US: $399.1e9 / 2.8e8 = $1425
Brazil: 10.5e9 / 1.8e8 = $58
(Israel: 9.4e9 / 6e6 = $1566)
Now thats what we call perspective.
Population numbers are gathered from the cia world factbook avaiable at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
To me, she seems to make some sense. I know software patents are bad on slashdot, but maybe that's because slashdot's only familiar with the insane US patent system. She actually makes it clear in the article that she doesn't want a US system.
..." gDict only knew 1.5 of those words, but I'm assuming it's a fancy way of saying anyone being pro software patents are morons. Did the poster notice that the article was pretty moderatly worded and forthcoming? Did he RTA?
I don't think software patents are evil by nature, it can be applicable in a few cases. However I see a problem of patents limiting the users legal rights to contents. Say firm M gets a patent on a fantastic text compression algorithm which they use as a part of a de-facto file format that stores formatted text. Now developer S can't legally develop a reader of this format to use on his operating system that isn't supported by M.
Maybe if someone could solve this problem then software patents could be feasible. Maybe - as someone else proposed here - open-source should be excempted from patents. Some sort of a patent system limited to commercial activities. Patent infridgement would be easy though with the code legally as open-source.
Btw.: "... non sequitur, solecism and faux-naivete
as we all know, Linux developers are all high flyers in the world of business and are always on the move, meeting new people.
That's if they can decide how to put the plane together.
1. Get Microsoft the contract (they'll run it on Windows.)
2. Salvation (not in the religious sense though.)
See, no ??? part.
If you're already searcing for E.T. and not a cure for cancer, why would you search for a cure for SARS? SARS is scary because it's new not because it's a currently uncontrollable viral disease, we've got loads of them. HIV/AIDS, TB, the common cold. Somwhere between 80% and 95% recover quite nicely from SARS, IIRC 500,000 die each year of the flue, you don't see us jumping around over that.
Disclaimier: I'm not saying SARS shouldn't be fought, all disease should, but let's all get some perspective.
(To back some of this up with a _little_ more reliable resource found through Google, look here)
Enlightenment, 1.0?? Someone mispost?? Oh, April 1. you say ...
:)
News at 11:
- Microsoft launches WindowsLinux
- Linus Torvalds declares Linux dead switching to BSD
Well at least I got to see rasterman's pretty good page and I think we could all agree that we all want his car