He gives one piece of very bad advice, on the subject of keeping your data on a big memory card and keeping it in your wallet. He says:
'If someone does discover it, you can try saying: "I don't know what's on there. My boss told me to give it to the head of the New York office."'
Never ever lie to customs guys. If they ring your boss and he denies it, or if you later change your story and say "oh yes, that's really all my files", or if you can't instantly give the address of the fictional 'New York office', then you better start relaxing in preparation for them gloving up to see if you are hiding any other memory cards.
Same with hidden partitions. If, by sheer bad luck, you do encounter a tech-savvy customs guy and he says 'have you got any hidden partitions on here?', say 'Yes'. Better than saying 'No' and having them find out later.
I'm not saying roll over and give them everything - you have rights - just don't lie.
What about all the ads for other BBC programmes? Trailers, promos, Radio 1 DJ ego-vertising? I sure skip those! I even skip the credits of most BBC shows now that they shrink them down to 1/8 screen size...
So when the internal, non user-replaceable battery dies on this laptop, which it will, I get the feeling Apple might not be too happy about replacing it...
For the same reason that Internet Explorer is a crufty, proprietary version of Firefox:) Try and kill off the free stuff and then charge for what they've got?
The SDK includes a standalone web server, so if you decide to move it off of Google's service, all you need to do is find somewhere to run that server. If you have a DNS entry for your app then you're probably a click away from moving it. Just run the dev server...
What you get from Google is the free hosting and access to the Google hardware. It might not be long before other providers offer Google App Engine hosting - it could become a standard. It looks like Django on steroids...
I'm mixing up the terminology perhaps, but only because people are used to getting 'odds' from a bookie expressed as 'X to Y'. And in stupid units too (mathematically speaking). "100-30"? "6-4 on"? Jeez they're not even in their lowest terms! No wonder mathematical numeracy is declining!
All bookies odds can be converted to a probability between 0 and 1, and it makes it easier to see if the probabilities do add up to more than 1 (and also if 100-30 is better than 6-4).
Of course some would argue (and this being slashdot, some will) that the real reason for the decline in numeracy is because we no longer have to work out weights in pounds and ounces, or distances in feet and miles, or money in pounds shillings and pence. Err yeah maybe I dunno. Discuss.
One of our research assistants started doing something like this about ten years ago, fitting a statistical model to previous soccer match results and the home/away effect. He rounded some of us up to chip in a few pounds each week and off he went to the bookies to bet on the outcome of his model.
Now, any statistical model (such as this LRMC thing, or the techniques m'colleague used) will only give estimates of the odds. It might say that the probability of team A winning is 0.6. Now, if the bookies are offering you a return of 0.7 then it's worth a bet. If the bookies rate it 50-50 then it's not worth a bet.
The trouble is that any statistical model worth its salt is going to produce probabilities that add up to 1.0, whereas the bookies' odds can add up to 1.2 or so. That's how they play the game and make their profits.
So after a season where we made a few pennies profit, and got some press interest (including a team from BBC Tomorrow's World filming us playing football), my friend realised the best thing to do was not to bet at all.
And instead he went into the business of supplying odds to bookmakers. From where he now sits at the top of a rather large business empire!
I might pop him an email to see what his current techniques are, but back in the day it was something similar to this LRMC thing.
If you're going that way, anyone called 'Dave' has to have quotes from 2001 A Space Odyssey play. "I can't do that, Dave" in HAL's voice on every system error.
I once announced to our department that because black toner was so expensive, we were switching our printers to black paper and white toner. I put a sign next to the printer saying to only put black paper in the printer. Someone actually bit, and asked me in all seriousness where in the store cupboard the black paper was.
On another occasion I sent an email to a stats software mailing list saying I'd written a package to implement not the Normal distribution, but the Paranormal distribution. Its mean value was the number you were just thinking of.
Why do we need a new word for the sort of people for whom there are plenty of words already? Although I suppose 'griefer' is acceptable in polite company, whereas the other words I'm thinking of aren't...
So anyone can now get a BBC Micror unning on their PC thanks to emulators. Anyone recommend a particular BBC Micro emulator? There's a whole bunch here:
Until some real new idea comes out. On the UK 'Robot Wars' it was turning into a battle of the flippers v the axes, until innovations like HypnoDisc and Gemini appeared. HypnoDisc had a heavy horizontal spinning disk with blades, and a very low CoG. It span up until it had masses of angular momentum, and then all the other robots just bounced off it with massive gashes. Version 1 was liable to being flipped, but in the next series they added a self-righting mechanism. Gemini was a 'clusterbot': the robot split into two independent parts, each with a flipper. Combined they were below the weight limit so it was all legal. Other bots found themselves facing two small light flippers, and so couldn't use the usual tactic of pointing their dangerous end at the opponent.
He also mentions that the Olympics site contains games very similar to those wonderful Ferry Halim games from www.orisinal.com - of course, they might be licensed from him. Anyone asked Ferry?
Any lawyers out there fancy taking on the Chinese Olympic Committee? Might not be a good idea...
Slashdot Mirror
He gives one piece of very bad advice, on the subject of keeping your data on a big memory card and keeping it in your wallet. He says:
'If someone does discover it, you can try saying: "I don't know what's on there. My boss told me to give it to the head of the New York office."'
Never ever lie to customs guys. If they ring your boss and he denies it, or if you later change your story and say "oh yes, that's really all my files", or if you can't instantly give the address of the fictional 'New York office', then you better start relaxing in preparation for them gloving up to see if you are hiding any other memory cards.
Same with hidden partitions. If, by sheer bad luck, you do encounter a tech-savvy customs guy and he says 'have you got any hidden partitions on here?', say 'Yes'. Better than saying 'No' and having them find out later.
I'm not saying roll over and give them everything - you have rights - just don't lie.
And is the Catholic church going to fund expeditions to these alien civilisations in order to convert them? Kinda sounds familiar, doesn't it?
What about all the ads for other BBC programmes? Trailers, promos, Radio 1 DJ ego-vertising? I sure skip those! I even skip the credits of most BBC shows now that they shrink them down to 1/8 screen size...
...because their Trac is slashdotted. Problem solved.
So when the internal, non user-replaceable battery dies on this laptop, which it will, I get the feeling Apple might not be too happy about replacing it...
What an idiot. Doesn't he realise? Can't he see? It should be "with which we disagree"! Not 'which we disagree with'!
A preposition is a bad thing to end a sentence with.
Be thankful it's not the IRA
For the same reason that Internet Explorer is a crufty, proprietary version of Firefox :) Try and kill off the free stuff and then charge for what they've got?
It's probably going to cost over half a million dollars to stick network cable round our campus. And we're not even underwater.
The SDK includes a standalone web server, so if you decide to move it off of Google's service, all you need to do is find somewhere to run that server. If you have a DNS entry for your app then you're probably a click away from moving it. Just run the dev server...
What you get from Google is the free hosting and access to the Google hardware. It might not be long before other providers offer Google App Engine hosting - it could become a standard. It looks like Django on steroids...
I'm mixing up the terminology perhaps, but only because people are used to getting 'odds' from a bookie expressed as 'X to Y'. And in stupid units too (mathematically speaking). "100-30"? "6-4 on"? Jeez they're not even in their lowest terms! No wonder mathematical numeracy is declining!
All bookies odds can be converted to a probability between 0 and 1, and it makes it easier to see if the probabilities do add up to more than 1 (and also if 100-30 is better than 6-4).
Of course some would argue (and this being slashdot, some will) that the real reason for the decline in numeracy is because we no longer have to work out weights in pounds and ounces, or distances in feet and miles, or money in pounds shillings and pence. Err yeah maybe I dunno. Discuss.
One of our research assistants started doing something like this about ten years ago, fitting a statistical model to previous soccer match results and the home/away effect. He rounded some of us up to chip in a few pounds each week and off he went to the bookies to bet on the outcome of his model.
Now, any statistical model (such as this LRMC thing, or the techniques m'colleague used) will only give estimates of the odds. It might say that the probability of team A winning is 0.6. Now, if the bookies are offering you a return of 0.7 then it's worth a bet. If the bookies rate it 50-50 then it's not worth a bet.
The trouble is that any statistical model worth its salt is going to produce probabilities that add up to 1.0, whereas the bookies' odds can add up to 1.2 or so. That's how they play the game and make their profits.
So after a season where we made a few pennies profit, and got some press interest (including a team from BBC Tomorrow's World filming us playing football), my friend realised the best thing to do was not to bet at all.
And instead he went into the business of supplying odds to bookmakers. From where he now sits at the top of a rather large business empire!
I might pop him an email to see what his current techniques are, but back in the day it was something similar to this LRMC thing.
If you're going that way, anyone called 'Dave' has to have quotes from 2001 A Space Odyssey play. "I can't do that, Dave" in HAL's voice on every system error.
I once announced to our department that because black toner was so expensive, we were switching our printers to black paper and white toner. I put a sign next to the printer saying to only put black paper in the printer. Someone actually bit, and asked me in all seriousness where in the store cupboard the black paper was.
On another occasion I sent an email to a stats software mailing list saying I'd written a package to implement not the Normal distribution, but the Paranormal distribution. Its mean value was the number you were just thinking of.
Why do we need a new word for the sort of people for whom there are plenty of words already? Although I suppose 'griefer' is acceptable in polite company, whereas the other words I'm thinking of aren't...
The Nerf Rifle Association?
Sales of noise-cancelling headphones suddenly rise...
So now we know what was in the back of the car in Repo Man...
Two things spring to mind:
1. If it's powered by your body heat, it's going to make you colder...
2. Don't you need a temperature _gradient_ to get useful power out of heat?
So anyone can now get a BBC Micror unning on their PC thanks to emulators. Anyone recommend a particular BBC Micro emulator? There's a whole bunch here:
http://bbc.nvg.org/emulators.php3
heck, there are BBC Micro emulators for the PSP now!
Until some real new idea comes out. On the UK 'Robot Wars' it was turning into a battle of the flippers v the axes, until innovations like HypnoDisc and Gemini appeared. HypnoDisc had a heavy horizontal spinning disk with blades, and a very low CoG. It span up until it had masses of angular momentum, and then all the other robots just bounced off it with massive gashes. Version 1 was liable to being flipped, but in the next series they added a self-righting mechanism. Gemini was a 'clusterbot': the robot split into two independent parts, each with a flipper. Combined they were below the weight limit so it was all legal. Other bots found themselves facing two small light flippers, and so couldn't use the usual tactic of pointing their dangerous end at the opponent.
He also mentions that the Olympics site contains games very similar to those wonderful Ferry Halim games from www.orisinal.com - of course, they might be licensed from him. Anyone asked Ferry?
Any lawyers out there fancy taking on the Chinese Olympic Committee? Might not be a good idea...
A Pedant writes: Challenger was a *space*craft - it didn't need air :)
A stealth bomber crashes? Nobody saw that coming.
Randy Bush's PDF presentation entirely in multi-coloured MS Comic Sans may well contain 'stark detail' but it looks like a nursery school show :)