The challenge of the Traveling Salesman Problem is the combinations. The amoeba is trying all solutions at once, and the light is telling it where not to go. The real question is, "Given the preconditions, and the behavior of an amoeba, could it not create an approximate solution?" Clearly not.
Our railroads are already already at capacity - and in the upper-plains states they have been filled up by coal and oil trains on top of the agricultural loads.
For various reasons trucking is both faster and cheaper for a lot of load-types.
I think Stephenson does a great job creating interesting characters and worlds, and also does a good a job with setting up stories. What he struggles with is ending them - apart from the time he spent explaining the nuts and bolts of elementary crypto-theory what really jarred me was the way Cryptonomicon ended. Which was "abruptly" and "poorly".
I really enjoyed Snow Crash - which is something of guilty-pleasure pulp cyber-punk. I really really liked The Diamond Age - I think it his best book in some ways.
After Cryptonomicon I haven't been able to bring myself to start the Baroque Cycle even though they've been on my bookshelves for nearly a decade now.:(
There are a lot of people who want to believe or not believe in certain outcomes, but this location in the Pacific has more verifiable nuggets of info that point more strongly in this direction than anywhere else.
I hope further experimentation (expeditions) yield a result that either confirms or invalidates the theory convincingly - just like in science!;-)
I couldn't find the article in my search just now, but did recently read an account of a girl who claims to have listened to Earhart calling for help on her father's radio - and that she thought she heard Earhart say "New York City" repeatedly - which doesn't make sense. But apparently there was a wreck of a merchant ship named Norwhich City on that atol?
I hope they get the money for their next expedition.
Sorry, but numerous, disjointed visions of what passes for good user-interface design, along with different standards for reliability doesn't sound like something I'm interested in at all. Especially if every user-interface panel requires me to push the "I'M A CHARGIN' MA LAZER" button before pressing "OK".
I'm getting sick of people generating web-hits by relating anything and everything to Anonymous.
"When is stone not stone?" I really loved that game - except for the level where I missed a secret door in a place I thought I had checked. I had to buy the hint-guide to find it, and when I saw where the door was I almost put my head through the desk. I mapped those levels out by hand.
I hope they find two pristine horns faster than I did.
That might be one of the best editorial asides I've ever seen on slashdot. I was going to say it is tragic so few will understand why that aside was so great. But perhaps it's more tragic yet that so many will.;-)
That's not another side of a coin. That's a justification-dance for unilateral actions that likely will shield a lot of criminal and unethical behavior from the public eye. I also the reject the "possession = ownership" argument - the data was on his hardware by virtue of his trust/status within wikileaks.
I was wondering where those Bank of America documents went - I had though they were going to be published by now. Wow. If he really digitally shredded that data he's a douche-bag of epic proportions.
I'm usually not this low-brow, but I'd like to give Bethesda a roll of toilet paper, which is the trophy for winning Ass-Wipe of the Year. And if you think about it, toilet paper is rolled like scrolls are, so sue me too, ass-wipes.
Learn Industrial control, you know interfacing with real hardware.. The cool part is a bug can kill someone so they actually encourage you to take your time to test and fix bugs! It's refreshing!
I recently moved from a fortune-50 corporation's IT department to a mid-cap industrial manufacturing company. I'm 1/2 of the IT department, and since moving here the scales have fallen from my eyes with respect to the prevalence and power of PLCs controlling machines implementing industrial automation. The guys I bump into who work on these things are like the condescending suspenders-wearing unix-geeks in Dilbert. Most of them have beards. Half of them don't have degrees - they just fell in love with "making things go" and found a career. They smile bemusedly at me and seem to have no fear of job security.
The most likely culprit seems to be some insecticides that were approved for the market shortly before this problem really became visible. I believe two separate studies have pointed in this direction. Sorry - I don't have references handy.
The similarities to Wave were the first thing that came to my mind. As an aside, I think Google should have blended wave into gmail, not had them side-by-side. None-the-less, I have to think some of this had to been cooking long before the google guy jumped ship - there just hasn't been enough time to design/build/test a change this big to their service, imho... unless I'm underestimating how robust their agile development processes are. . .
By "hacking" I mean "slamming out some quick-and-dirty program." I can see the 500 replies to this decrying my misuse of the word Hacking comnig. In anticipation of that, consider that the word can be used in many ways to convey nuances of meaning, and I think this works. Moving on...
Everyone I know still doing Perl (including me sometimes) is working in the systems space. Service management, system monitoring and management... Perl is just a better shell scripting language in this context.
I don't know anyone doing application development in perl anymore. My friends and peers who used to walk on water with their god-like perl skills have all moved on to Python and Ruby, and I'm heading that way myself now. One friend remarked to me "I wish I'd switched from Python to Perl sooner. Ten years of Perl man... that shit rots your brain." One person who is still heavily involved with the perl development community informed me within the past year "What people don't realize about Perl 6 was that it was a research project."
Um.... well, that's clearly what Perl 6 became. But I remember when Perl 6 was announced - it was not framed as "I'm going to do a research project while other people take care of the production perl." That's what effectively happened, but that's not really what was planned based on my recollection of OSCON talks and previous slashdot articles.
Anyway... while Perl can do almost anything, I think other languages do a lot of those things more cleanly, and in a manner more conducive to writing code that doesn't suck to maintain. That said, I look forward to Perl 6 finally being "mostly done" so it can truly be assessed on its own merits, not its lamentable history.
And why do people like to hate on Perl 6? In my opinion its simple - missed commitments on schedule. Lots of them.
Slashdot Mirror
The challenge of the Traveling Salesman Problem is the combinations. The amoeba is trying all solutions at once, and the light is telling it where not to go. The real question is, "Given the preconditions, and the behavior of an amoeba, could it not create an approximate solution?" Clearly not.
Our railroads are already already at capacity - and in the upper-plains states they have been filled up by coal and oil trains on top of the agricultural loads.
For various reasons trucking is both faster and cheaper for a lot of load-types.
I think Stephenson does a great job creating interesting characters and worlds, and also does a good a job with setting up stories. What he struggles with is ending them - apart from the time he spent explaining the nuts and bolts of elementary crypto-theory what really jarred me was the way Cryptonomicon ended. Which was "abruptly" and "poorly".
I really enjoyed Snow Crash - which is something of guilty-pleasure pulp cyber-punk. I really really liked The Diamond Age - I think it his best book in some ways.
After Cryptonomicon I haven't been able to bring myself to start the Baroque Cycle even though they've been on my bookshelves for nearly a decade now. :(
Ah - here's a better summary....
http://www.extremetech.com/ext...
There are a lot of people who want to believe or not believe in certain outcomes, but this location in the Pacific has more verifiable nuggets of info that point more strongly in this direction than anywhere else.
I hope further experimentation (expeditions) yield a result that either confirms or invalidates the theory convincingly - just like in science! ;-)
I couldn't find the article in my search just now, but did recently read an account of a girl who claims to have listened to Earhart calling for help on her father's radio - and that she thought she heard Earhart say "New York City" repeatedly - which doesn't make sense. But apparently there was a wreck of a merchant ship named Norwhich City on that atol?
I hope they get the money for their next expedition.
Do you think they need to embrace Open Source to survive? Will they?
You raved about Python in the past. Is it still your preferred language/platform for slinging code?
Sorry, but numerous, disjointed visions of what passes for good user-interface design, along with different standards for reliability doesn't sound like something I'm interested in at all. Especially if every user-interface panel requires me to push the "I'M A CHARGIN' MA LAZER" button before pressing "OK".
I'm getting sick of people generating web-hits by relating anything and everything to Anonymous.
You need some Santorum-flavored coffee creamer.
They shipped the level editor with Marathon 3.
I need to pick this game up again. I was stuck on the Colony Ship For Sale level...
As fun and immersive as the Marathon games are, the multi-player play was even better. "King of the Hill" lead to sooooo much carnage.
"When is stone not stone?" I really loved that game - except for the level where I missed a secret door in a place I thought I had checked. I had to buy the hint-guide to find it, and when I saw where the door was I almost put my head through the desk. I mapped those levels out by hand.
Just saw this while taking a break from Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls, which I was playing on my PS3.
Gameplay video looked impressive. But it sure looked like a modern "Dungeon Master" to me.
I hope they find two pristine horns faster than I did.
That might be one of the best editorial asides I've ever seen on slashdot. I was going to say it is tragic so few will understand why that aside was so great. But perhaps it's more tragic yet that so many will. ;-)
Life is an algorithm.
That's not another side of a coin. That's a justification-dance for unilateral actions that likely will shield a lot of criminal and unethical behavior from the public eye. I also the reject the "possession = ownership" argument - the data was on his hardware by virtue of his trust/status within wikileaks.
If he shredded the BoA docs, he can rot in hell.
I was wondering where those Bank of America documents went - I had though they were going to be published by now. Wow. If he really digitally shredded that data he's a douche-bag of epic proportions.
I'm usually not this low-brow, but I'd like to give Bethesda a roll of toilet paper, which is the trophy for winning Ass-Wipe of the Year. And if you think about it, toilet paper is rolled like scrolls are, so sue me too, ass-wipes.
Learn Industrial control, you know interfacing with real hardware.. The cool part is a bug can kill someone so they actually encourage you to take your time to test and fix bugs! It's refreshing!
I recently moved from a fortune-50 corporation's IT department to a mid-cap industrial manufacturing company. I'm 1/2 of the IT department, and since moving here the scales have fallen from my eyes with respect to the prevalence and power of PLCs controlling machines implementing industrial automation. The guys I bump into who work on these things are like the condescending suspenders-wearing unix-geeks in Dilbert. Most of them have beards. Half of them don't have degrees - they just fell in love with "making things go" and found a career. They smile bemusedly at me and seem to have no fear of job security.
And.... http://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/poisoned-pollen
Which points to an insecticide weakening the bees enough for a parasite to finish them off.
There is a fair bit of info on the wikipedia page for Colony Collapse Disorder...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder
The most likely culprit seems to be some insecticides that were approved for the market shortly before this problem really became visible. I believe two separate studies have pointed in this direction. Sorry - I don't have references handy.
Wish there was a "Share this on facebook" button for comments...
The similarities to Wave were the first thing that came to my mind. As an aside, I think Google should have blended wave into gmail, not had them side-by-side. None-the-less, I have to think some of this had to been cooking long before the google guy jumped ship - there just hasn't been enough time to design/build/test a change this big to their service, imho... unless I'm underestimating how robust their agile development processes are. . .
By "hacking" I mean "slamming out some quick-and-dirty program." I can see the 500 replies to this decrying my misuse of the word Hacking comnig. In anticipation of that, consider that the word can be used in many ways to convey nuances of meaning, and I think this works. Moving on...
Everyone I know still doing Perl (including me sometimes) is working in the systems space. Service management, system monitoring and management... Perl is just a better shell scripting language in this context.
I don't know anyone doing application development in perl anymore. My friends and peers who used to walk on water with their god-like perl skills have all moved on to Python and Ruby, and I'm heading that way myself now. One friend remarked to me "I wish I'd switched from Python to Perl sooner. Ten years of Perl man ... that shit rots your brain." One person who is still heavily involved with the perl development community informed me within the past year "What people don't realize about Perl 6 was that it was a research project."
Um.... well, that's clearly what Perl 6 became. But I remember when Perl 6 was announced - it was not framed as "I'm going to do a research project while other people take care of the production perl." That's what effectively happened, but that's not really what was planned based on my recollection of OSCON talks and previous slashdot articles.
Anyway... while Perl can do almost anything, I think other languages do a lot of those things more cleanly, and in a manner more conducive to writing code that doesn't suck to maintain. That said, I look forward to Perl 6 finally being "mostly done" so it can truly be assessed on its own merits, not its lamentable history.
And why do people like to hate on Perl 6? In my opinion its simple - missed commitments on schedule. Lots of them.