What I find amusing about NASA bitching...
on
Tito In Space
·
· Score: 1
That Tito doesn't have enough training is that they wouldn't let him take their training. Piss on NASA.
This sets an interesting precedent for the Russian Space Agency - @ 20 million / Tourist, and 10 million / Soyuz, and, say, 12 Soyuz flights a year, they won't be doing too shabbily... Maybe they can use the proceeds to fund Mir2??? LOL
Seriously, how much would it cost to build a tourist capsule and attach it to the ISS where you could take tourists and they could have their own private window and just watch the planet whiz by and NASA could stop bitching about Tito potentially breaking shit.
Cyano
My god, I gave up moderation privs to write that. <sigh>
Its not so good. For prime numbers, you're worse off (trivially):
p = p^1
Note that I've ignored the delta - eg. for the (can't remember the name) special primes that appear as 2^n -1. Here, you run into trouble finding the delta (you have to factor p, then p-1, then p+1, then p-2... factoring being a hard problem (in NP), you're not going to have much fun implementing this;-). You also have the problem of deciding when you have achieved 'enough' compression.
By the counting arguments expressed in the other replies to your post, there will be points where, by the time you have factored the number, counted the factors & their exponents, and the delta, you're worse off than when you started.
I would expect this to be true for very small
numbers. Note that no matter what we do, we're effectively in non-computable space because we have to factor prime numbers. So as reasonable as this algorithm is for compressing numbers, its going to take far too long to do it to be practical, at least, without quantum computers.
First off - scheme is a functional language, not an OO language.
Second, pseudo-code is how we describe algorithms, which, as we all know, is a large part of CS. Perhaps this table will enlighten you:
Degree/Diploma Focus
Computer Engineering Hardware design
B. Sc. Computer Science Algorithms, language design, computability, structures of data, efficiency.
Software Engineering Handling obscene amounts of code and making it managable
Programming Diploma VB
Third: I disagree with learning scheme as a first language - the nature of C/Pascal being close to assembler helps people to fundamentally understand what the machine is doing - further, in practical terms, very little is being done in scheme in terms of volume of code 'in the real world' which is, where the majority of grads go. Toy languages are good for 3rd year.
Fourth: C++ is such a bad adaption of OO to C that you can code entirely in C while using a C++ compiler. This means that, you have the worst of both worlds - poor maintainability of C (structure s that run around and things that are changing all over the place) and OO footprint.
Fifth: from our experience at U. of Victoria teaching java as a first language does harm because memory allocation, pointers, etc. are not taught. Even though most languages in heavy use today - java, perl, python, etc. all have garbage-collection, these concepts are KEY, and should be taught in 1st year.
Although, you do have methanol in the indycar fuel tanks...
6. No pedestrians / bicycles / wet weather / etc. on the track.
Also of note:
5000 pound roll cage in a NASCAR vs. a 1500 pound - most of the weight in batteries - Impulse... Hmmm... anyone remember the Beetle-vs.-Cadillac kinetic energy comparison from physics? Thats why I won't own one (a beetle, or an Impulse;-)
What linux must do to SUCCEED on the DESKTOP where Windoze dominates.
And she is completely correct - however, she, having been tinkering since 1994 should know that installers/shells/desktops are almost at that point now. De-facto standards are already in place: Gnome, bash, etc. Sawfish, as near as I can tell, is rock solid.
The big one, is, of course, documentation. And since the ratio of people who like writing to people who like coding is not good, until someone is paid to do documentation, documentation will still be substandard.
The solution comes along when someone sees an opportunity to make money selling the docs, packaged with a distribution.
The DMCA only protects valid copyright holders - as a napster user, unless you recorded the song (and its original), YOU DON'T OWN THE COPYRIGHT, THUS, THE DuMbCA DOESN'T APPLY TO YOU.
Cyano
If you want to do something about the DuMbCA, give to the EFF, the ACLU, or talk to somebody who can actually do something. Being articulate helps. Or move outside of the US's jurisdiction.
Its just like most animals are good at storing PCBs in fatty tissues. Here's what you'd do with these beasties:
1. Hanford has a spill. (At the Hanford Bar & Grill, with Radioactive Leaks, and Nuclear Spills! (sung to a cheesy diner tune)) (Dig through the 'Almost Live' old episodes - its hilarious!)
2. Seed the ground near the site with these beasties so that the spill doesn't make it into, say, the Columbia river.
3. After the bugs have solidified / precipitated out all the U / Pu / Th / Etc (that must be element 115!) you collect all the soil, extract the radioactive substances (if you can) and bury them in a deep dark unused coal mine where they won't escape until they are no longer radioactive.
That's what I hate most about slashdot. In the rush to get an opinion out (and thus acquire more karma), people see the headline, make some comment, be it 'the precautionary principle', 'zero-sum game', or 'Microsoft sucks', or whatever.
I'm tired of this. The above post obviously didn't read the article - I quote:
Any such artificial attempt to restore equilibrium in a natural system runs the risk of overcorrecting
and then:
The proper course of action with regards to greenhouse gas is to lower our emissions
For everyone who read the article, its clear that the system, which I should add, is still on the drawing board, is about reducing current emissions out of smokestacks... Exactly what the above comment laments our failure to do.
So, to all of slashdot:
read the fucking article before you fucking post!
Oh yeah, and read the fucking article before you fucking moderate!
Are actually zero-sum games. Non-zero sum games typically require collaboration, and that output / points / winnings go up. Chess, Go, Diplomacy, etc. are all zero-sum games - the resources of the game are all consumed / traded around until someone wins and / or someone else loses.
Note that the defending portion of bridge could be considered to be non-zero-sum: I might have to give up one trick so my partner can take two...
D&D - yes, its not a zero sum game, however, some DMs try to make it that way.
SimCity - yes, its also not a zero sum game.
I suspect that most of the non-zero-sum games are going to be open ended, or have some arbitrary stopping point (eg. whoever has the most points after 30 rounds).
I had a game called Stock Ticker, but it was pure randomness - stocks go up/down at random (dice rolling). So it too was a zero-sum game.
Keep in mind, that, for all the interesting consequences that fall out of game theory, the CIA used game theory to 'prove' that Iran would not attack Iraq to start the Iran-Iraq war...
Theo complained about people doing implementations that had subtle bugs. Further, he didn't have confidence, in the masses doing coding, to learn about those subtle bugs and to actually learn how to use the interfaces correctly.
He then goes on to say that he really doesn't care about kernel design, so long as the kernel design works.
These two issues are completely different.
Lets face it - he's an implementation junkie. Which I would guess was not, and still is not, popular with the NetBSD crowd, as he probably had to step on a few toes...
'You're not using strcat correctly. You've introduced 6 exploitable bugs into the kernel'
'What do you mean I'm not using strcat correctly?? I've been coding since I was twelve years old!'
regarding internet access (AFAIK). I don't know if its as bad as china, but still.
The point being, why bother with this if nobody's allowed to do anything on the net anyways?
And don't even get me started about 'muslims only being allowed to vote' there.
Cyano
Dollars = Lives: WRONG
on
Golden Rice
·
· Score: 1
Wealth is produced by DOING SOMETHING USEFUL FOR SOMEONE ELSE. If you do something more useful, you get paid more. Just because you wouldn't pay someone X dollars to do Y doesn't mean that other people won't. I'm not even going to talk about how you derive the value of a life, that's just garbage. If you can't see past that, I suggest you return to your Sociology classes, and continue to rant with the International Socialists and other idiots who couldn't see daylight in front of their faces.
As usual, most people just can't seem to see that the value of money is arbitrary.
Cyano.
As for the rice - its great for low-income asian nations with stable environments, but for the places with real development issues (development, democracy, etc. come from within - they are never successful when imposed from the outside and not understood inside the nation) it will not help one bit.
Note that the study gave 2 days of rest between the first test / learning period and the 2nd period. This is drastically different from the usual 5-10 hours between stopping cramming and writing the exam.
I know that after an exam I lose much of the material I studied the night before.
Also note that this wasn't raw memorization, it was a learned activity, so we might get different results if the subjects had to memorize arbitrary, random etc. pieces of information.
But what are we going to do when there is one that is likely to impact... I know there have been some great ideas about nuking them (not pulverizing them, just set off a nuke next to one and it moves out of the way a little bit, enough to miss the planet).
Is anyone actually working on building something capable of shifting an asteroid's trajectory?
The RIAA knows damn well that they need to control napster, not shut it down. They're just turning up the pressure before they acquire it. We all know that if the RIAA shuts down napster then the entire community will move over to other services (gnutella) - so their only chance is to grab Napster now, before its too late.
Of course, as soon as they start changing Napster, and people don't like the changes, then they get the same problem, but at least they'll have some control if they grab the company now.
The whole issue now is what price will they pay? That's what this is about...
Yes, I know this whole mess is flamebait, but sometimes you just get fed up...
Come on - I don't have to install HotJava with Solaris, I don't have to install Netscape with RedHat, etc. etc. etc. As an OEM shipping Linux, I can modify the desktop any way it suits me, (including stripping out a browser and adding my own) whereas
WITH MS, I DON'T HAVE A CHOICE, I HAVE TO INSTALL IE.
If you don't see what MS did as illegal product tying, as opposed to product promotion, then you either A) Work for MS and agree with the practice, or B) Haven't been fighting with MS products for the past 4 years, reading the paper, or BOOTING YOUR PC.
You have to realise that in Japan, they actually have two varieties of anime - shyugio (boy anime) and shyujio (girl anime) (I might have those mixed up / misspelled). Essentially, the worst ones end up as WWF to sell toys and bad soap operas, and the best ones ate things like Ghost in the Shell and funny stuff like Ranma 1/2 (although some people disagree with me on Ranma, I think its hilarious).
Also, more anime that you'll find in canada (but not particularly good anime) is Samurai Pizza Cats and Astro-Boy.
Slashdot Mirror
That Tito doesn't have enough training is that they wouldn't let him take their training. Piss on NASA.
This sets an interesting precedent for the Russian Space Agency - @ 20 million / Tourist, and 10 million / Soyuz, and, say, 12 Soyuz flights a year, they won't be doing too shabbily... Maybe they can use the proceeds to fund Mir2??? LOL
Seriously, how much would it cost to build a tourist capsule and attach it to the ISS where you could take tourists and they could have their own private window and just watch the planet whiz by and NASA could stop bitching about Tito potentially breaking shit.
Cyano
My god, I gave up moderation privs to write that. <sigh>
This works well for highly composite numbers, eg.
;-). You also have the problem of deciding when you have achieved 'enough' compression.
4096 => 2^12
However for less composite numbers,
p*q = p^1, q^1, p & q prime
Its not so good. For prime numbers, you're worse off (trivially):
p = p^1
Note that I've ignored the delta - eg. for the (can't remember the name) special primes that appear as 2^n -1. Here, you run into trouble finding the delta (you have to factor p, then p-1, then p+1, then p-2... factoring being a hard problem (in NP), you're not going to have much fun implementing this
By the counting arguments expressed in the other replies to your post, there will be points where, by the time you have factored the number, counted the factors & their exponents, and the delta, you're worse off than when you started.
I would expect this to be true for very small
numbers. Note that no matter what we do, we're effectively in non-computable space because we have to factor prime numbers. So as reasonable as this algorithm is for compressing numbers, its going to take far too long to do it to be practical, at least, without quantum computers.
Cyano
Apparently has a standing policy that if extraterrestrial/alien space vehicles are detected, that they will shoot first and ask questions later.
I don't know if this is an urban legend or not - but it fits with the Cold War paranoid mindset.
It does beg the question (presuming the first ship is destroyed) what happens with the _second_ ship arrives?
Cyano
First off - scheme is a functional language, not an OO language.
Second, pseudo-code is how we describe algorithms, which, as we all know, is a large part of CS. Perhaps this table will enlighten you:
Degree/Diploma Focus
Computer Engineering Hardware design
B. Sc. Computer Science Algorithms, language design, computability, structures of data, efficiency.
Software Engineering Handling obscene amounts of code and making it managable
Programming Diploma VB
Third: I disagree with learning scheme as a first language - the nature of C/Pascal being close to assembler helps people to fundamentally understand what the machine is doing - further, in practical terms, very little is being done in scheme in terms of volume of code 'in the real world' which is, where the majority of grads go. Toy languages are good for 3rd year.
Fourth: C++ is such a bad adaption of OO to C that you can code entirely in C while using a C++ compiler. This means that, you have the worst of both worlds - poor maintainability of C (structure s that run around and things that are changing all over the place) and OO footprint.
Fifth: from our experience at U. of Victoria teaching java as a first language does harm because memory allocation, pointers, etc. are not taught. Even though most languages in heavy use today - java, perl, python, etc. all have garbage-collection, these concepts are KEY, and should be taught in 1st year.
Although, you do have methanol in the indycar fuel tanks...
;-)
6. No pedestrians / bicycles / wet weather / etc. on the track.
Also of note:
5000 pound roll cage in a NASCAR vs. a 1500 pound - most of the weight in batteries - Impulse... Hmmm... anyone remember the Beetle-vs.-Cadillac kinetic energy comparison from physics? Thats why I won't own one (a beetle, or an Impulse
Cyano
And she is completely correct - however, she, having been tinkering since 1994 should know that installers/shells/desktops are almost at that point now. De-facto standards are already in place: Gnome, bash, etc. Sawfish, as near as I can tell, is rock solid.
The big one, is, of course, documentation. And since the ratio of people who like writing to people who like coding is not good, until someone is paid to do documentation, documentation will still be substandard.
The solution comes along when someone sees an opportunity to make money selling the docs, packaged with a distribution.
O'reiley + RedHat?
Cyano
The DMCA only protects valid copyright holders - as a napster user, unless you recorded the song (and its original), YOU DON'T OWN THE COPYRIGHT, THUS, THE DuMbCA DOESN'T APPLY TO YOU.
Cyano
If you want to do something about the DuMbCA, give to the EFF, the ACLU, or talk to somebody who can actually do something. Being articulate helps. Or move outside of the US's jurisdiction.
Ummm, forgive me, but if IPV6 is anywhere near as large as V4, won't it be a little too large for tiny devices...
:-)
I can just see it - adding IPV6 to my handspring - 100K of onboard apps and 7.9 MB of IP stack...
As bad as WAP is, at least it can be feasibly implemented on small hardware.
Cyano
PS - not to diss IPV6 - thats all good to me, its just not going to solve all our problems
Its just like most animals are good at storing PCBs in fatty tissues. Here's what you'd do with these beasties:
1. Hanford has a spill. (At the Hanford Bar & Grill, with Radioactive Leaks, and Nuclear Spills! (sung to a cheesy diner tune)) (Dig through the 'Almost Live' old episodes - its hilarious!)
2. Seed the ground near the site with these beasties so that the spill doesn't make it into, say, the Columbia river.
3. After the bugs have solidified / precipitated out all the U / Pu / Th / Etc (that must be element 115!) you collect all the soil, extract the radioactive substances (if you can) and bury them in a deep dark unused coal mine where they won't escape until they are no longer radioactive.
Cyano
Lets see here - we have 30000 genes, so:
Assuming genes are just on/off switches:
We boil down to a 2^30,000 array of bits. Thats what, 30Kb?, or ~ 4KB?
HAHAHAHA.
2^30000 is still a goddamn HUGE number. Never mind that with all the interactions possible, it could be more like 100^30000.
And the noble flatworm is 2^18000 bits? So
2^30000/2^18000 makes humans 2^12000 TIMES more complicated than the flatworm.
I don't think that's all that surprising, do you?
I'm tired of this. The above post obviously didn't read the article - I quote:
Any such artificial attempt to restore equilibrium in a natural system runs the risk of overcorrecting
and then:
The proper course of action with regards to greenhouse gas is to lower our emissions
For everyone who read the article, its clear that the system, which I should add, is still on the drawing board, is about reducing current emissions out of smokestacks... Exactly what the above comment laments our failure to do.
So, to all of slashdot: read the fucking article before you fucking post!
Oh yeah, and read the fucking article before you fucking moderate!
Are actually zero-sum games. Non-zero sum games typically require collaboration, and that output / points / winnings go up. Chess, Go, Diplomacy, etc. are all zero-sum games - the resources of the game are all consumed / traded around until someone wins and / or someone else loses.
Note that the defending portion of bridge could be considered to be non-zero-sum: I might have to give up one trick so my partner can take two...
D&D - yes, its not a zero sum game, however, some DMs try to make it that way.
SimCity - yes, its also not a zero sum game.
I suspect that most of the non-zero-sum games are going to be open ended, or have some arbitrary stopping point (eg. whoever has the most points after 30 rounds).
I had a game called Stock Ticker, but it was pure randomness - stocks go up/down at random (dice rolling). So it too was a zero-sum game.
Keep in mind, that, for all the interesting consequences that fall out of game theory, the CIA used game theory to 'prove' that Iran would not attack Iraq to start the Iran-Iraq war...
Cya
Theo complained about people doing implementations that had subtle bugs. Further, he didn't have confidence, in the masses doing coding, to learn about those subtle bugs and to actually learn how to use the interfaces correctly.
He then goes on to say that he really doesn't care about kernel design, so long as the kernel design works.
These two issues are completely different.
Lets face it - he's an implementation junkie. Which I would guess was not, and still is not, popular with the NetBSD crowd, as he probably had to step on a few toes...
'You're not using strcat correctly. You've introduced 6 exploitable bugs into the kernel'
'What do you mean I'm not using strcat correctly?? I've been coding since I was twelve years old!'
Cyano
regarding internet access (AFAIK). I don't know if its as bad as china, but still.
The point being, why bother with this if nobody's allowed to do anything on the net anyways?
And don't even get me started about 'muslims only being allowed to vote' there.
Cyano
Wealth is produced by DOING SOMETHING USEFUL FOR SOMEONE ELSE. If you do something more useful, you get paid more. Just because you wouldn't pay someone X dollars to do Y doesn't mean that other people won't. I'm not even going to talk about how you derive the value of a life, that's just garbage. If you can't see past that, I suggest you return to your Sociology classes, and continue to rant with the International Socialists and other idiots who couldn't see daylight in front of their faces.
As usual, most people just can't seem to see that the value of money is arbitrary.
Cyano.
As for the rice - its great for low-income asian nations with stable environments, but for the places with real development issues (development, democracy, etc. come from within - they are never successful when imposed from the outside and not understood inside the nation) it will not help one bit.
Veronica-2 is already slashdotted...
Note that the study gave 2 days of rest between the first test / learning period and the 2nd period. This is drastically different from the usual 5-10 hours between stopping cramming and writing the exam.
I know that after an exam I lose much of the material I studied the night before.
Also note that this wasn't raw memorization, it was a learned activity, so we might get different results if the subjects had to memorize arbitrary, random etc. pieces of information.
Cyano
We really need end to end encryption now.
I mean, like, but, who DIDN'T expect this?
PGP is good. SSH is good. SSL is good. But we really need IPSec / IPv6.
Kinda makes all those expensive Layer-4 switches less useful though (if you encrypt at layer 3).
Cyano.
But what are we going to do when there is one that is likely to impact... I know there have been some great ideas about nuking them (not pulverizing them, just set off a nuke next to one and it moves out of the way a little bit, enough to miss the planet).
Is anyone actually working on building something capable of shifting an asteroid's trajectory?
These won't cure all blindness - you need to be able to replace / repair the optic nerve. Anyone know of any of this actually being worked on?
/nick on yahoo mail can suck my cock...
Cyano
Oh yeah - whoever registered my
I cannot affect the Microsoft court case, but I can have an effect on the lawmakers...
Clear???
Ever since I figured this out it drives me bonkers when people use the wrong one
I'd love to see a beowulf cluster of these ;-)
Cyano
The RIAA knows damn well that they need to control napster, not shut it down. They're just turning up the pressure before they acquire it. We all know that if the RIAA shuts down napster then the entire community will move over to other services (gnutella) - so their only chance is to grab Napster now, before its too late.
Of course, as soon as they start changing Napster, and people don't like the changes, then they get the same problem, but at least they'll have some control if they grab the company now.
The whole issue now is what price will they pay? That's what this is about...
Cyano
Yes, I know this whole mess is flamebait, but sometimes you just get fed up...
Come on - I don't have to install HotJava with Solaris, I don't have to install Netscape with RedHat, etc. etc. etc. As an OEM shipping Linux, I can modify the desktop any way it suits me, (including stripping out a browser and adding my own) whereas
WITH MS, I DON'T HAVE A CHOICE, I HAVE TO INSTALL IE.
If you don't see what MS did as illegal product tying, as opposed to product promotion, then you either A) Work for MS and agree with the practice, or B) Haven't been fighting with MS products for the past 4 years, reading the paper, or BOOTING YOUR PC.
OK, I'm finished now.
Cyano
You have to realise that in Japan, they actually have two varieties of anime - shyugio (boy anime) and shyujio (girl anime) (I might have those mixed up / misspelled). Essentially, the worst ones end up as WWF to sell toys and bad soap operas, and the best ones ate things like Ghost in the Shell and funny stuff like Ranma 1/2 (although some people disagree with me on Ranma, I think its hilarious).
Also, more anime that you'll find in canada (but not particularly good anime) is Samurai Pizza Cats and Astro-Boy.
Cyano