I live in the United States, but I haven't really kept up with news or politics in the last five years or so (I've been pretty busy). I assume everything's roughly as it was last time I checked. So, situation's not bad! We killed the Clipper Chip and stopped Big Brother.
I should check and see what this new president has been up to.
This has far less to do with Linux business usefulness, per se, as it does with IBM's continued attempts to publicize Linux to the larger world (see their Super Bowl ads).
Sure, you could conceivably make a moving movie about some accountant from Denver being whipped to death for three bloody hours. But I find it hard to imagine it working. My point is that people found meaning in The Passion because it was about Jesus dying for them and for his and their belief. If you take that away it becomes a bondage flick. Which, of course, can be good and meaningful, but not in the same way.
Similarly, Narnia becomes yet another fantasy battle movie. Could be good, but it wouldn't be for the same reason as the original.
I'm actually worried that the movie won't have a strong enough Christian/religious theme.
Now, I'm an athiest, brought up Quaker, with little interest in spreading Christianity or anything.
But I read the books before I could understand the whole Christian allegory thing. I loved them. I reread them later, understood, and felt betrayed. Then I matured enough to where I could read them a third time and not take it so hard. And I realize that the whole feel of the stories, the idea that they had weight and importance and weren't just some guys who had beef with each other, that came straight out of the religious treatment of the characters.
If Aslan isn't God, and the White Witch is just some woman who wants to rule this place, the story becomes a cheesy special-effects battle movie. Yay, Dungeons and Dragons. If they can try to instill some kind of reverence and awe, and a feeling that these people are taking part in a larger struggle, that what is happening matters, I think the story can carry itself a lot better.
If you can get over the fact that it's about Christianity, of course.
I never saw The Passion, and I don't think it's a great idea for a movie, and so forth. But think how much more pointless a film it would be if the guy who was being tortured and suffering wasn't Jesus.
Given a word $word, this counts the syllables with something like 98% accuracy:
$word=~s/^[^a-zA-Z]+//g; #make lowercase
my @count=$word=~/[aeiouy]+/gi; # base count is # of vowel groups my @trailinge=$word=~/[e]$/gi; # count traiing Es (-1 to syllable count) my @trailinged=$word=~/ed$/gi; # count trailing EDs (-1) my @threevowels=$word=~/[aeiou]{3}/gi; # count three vowels in a row (+1) my @ded=$word=~/ded$/gi; # if word ends in 'ded', trailing ED rule doesn't apply, add one my @apot=$word=~/sn't/gi; # count apostraphes (+1) my $total = scalar @count - (scalar @trailinge + scalar @trailinged) + (scalar @threevowels + scalar @ded + scalar @apot); #sum various rules to arrive at total if($total
In "The Inventions of Daedalus", scientist and author David E. Jones points out that Xenon is a noble gas with a density greater than water. If you combine Xenon with oxygen and put it in a really big tank, you will have a breathable gas in a tank, in which human being can float. By combining xenon with appropriate amounts of nitrogen, you can get the density close to that of humans, and it will be similar to weightlessness.
Wait, it doesn't seem like that would work at all. It doesn't look like Xenon has a density anywhere near that of water. And even if it did, as a gas Xenon would be compressable, which means the density would vary dramatically with depth -- you'd have a particular height you floated at, and going down ten meters would double the pressure and the density and the lift. If it really had a density close to that of water, it would act like (compressable) water, and you'd float on it at a certain level. But it doesn't and you wouldn't.
Personally, I don't see tagging and searching as competing Internet search philosophies. One is the table of contents and one is the index. You use both, just at different times depending on your need.
That's not a dichotomy, it's a single system. Tag-search is one side of the spectrum and heirarchical folders is the other. You create and search tags. "Looking" at a tag is just a simple search.
Tag-search systems will take over as the file/data-storage paradigm in a whole lot of areas. We're just seeing the start of this. Rarely do I make predictions like this, but I've been quite sure of this for some time. Spotlight, del.icio.us, and iTunes are just the start.
In American universities (outside of the medical schools) being Chair of the department is usually not that big a deal. It isn't like some European universities where the Chair is really the person who runs the show.
For example, at my school, the chair of the Physics department cycles through the faculty, changing hands every three years.
On first glance, this seemed pretty stupid. It's not like I would say "oh, I have access to the lyrics, I don't need the song now."
However, if I'm gonna be pirating music anyway, access to the lyrics for free makes buying the album that much less attractive. The idea is that the lyrics are bundled with the album, and distributing them for free (to be found via the internet) makes music piracy that much more attractive, as it removes a perk of buying the CD.
However, this is still a stupid battle to fight. Google = lyric finder. You can't keep short blocks of text anyone can type up a secret. But they do have reasons for fighting it besides general assholeness.
Dear Slashdot: Way to moderate me 'troll' when I post a serious question on a topic of great interest to me and am eagerly awaiting responses and discussion. Thanks.
However, the long and muscular tail, as well as other features of the nose and digestive system, are covered under several broad Microsoft patents. Extermination is expected to commence shortly.
I work on cryptography and information theory, I read Bruce Schneier, I have secure passwords and am suspicious of everything. I dabble in paranoia, read things like Free Culture and 2600, and am generally anti-The-Man.
That said, sometimes I can't really remember why I care if someone is gathering information on me. Sure, if a company or government monitors my browsing habits or watches where I drive, they can make ads targeted or develop a psychological profile, but what's the real downside? Why should I care if they know what I buy or where I drive? Sure, if I were running for office, it might help with a smear campaign, but other than that, what does it matter? And that's really the only example that comes to mind sometimes, Hoover threatening to release tapes of MLK having sex. But at that point, they're focusing on you as a public figure and breaking the law to gather particularly embarrassing information. For other stuff for the average Joe, what's the problem?
I'm sure everyone has examples. Remind me why I care if they're gathering databases on where we drive or what we do or who we are.
Seriously, remind me why I need privacy. I forget sometimes.
Page 773, when Randy is looking at the parking lot where they are soon to divide up their grandparents' belongings. I had to find it once to type it up to a friend (because for some reason it didn't occur to me to google it).
As a physics major, I've always appreciated it a lot, and it reminds me not to shy away from examining things that I don't have a good framework for already.
Sun is offering a deal that seems torn from a cell-phone company playbook: offering a "free" Ultra 20 Opteron workstation if you sign up for a $29.95/mo, 3-year service contract.
Oh, come on, we can see right through that. It's just another sleazy attempt by Sun to acquire money in exchange for goods and services.
No discussion of this can be complete without a mention of the Klein Four, and a capella group from Northwestern University.
My favorite song of theirs is Finite Simple Group of Order Two, for the sheer audacity of cramming so many math puns into so few words. First three verses:
The path of love is never smooth But mine's continuous for you You're the upper bound in the chains of my heart You're my Axiom of Choice, you know it's true
But lately our relation's not so well-defined And I just can't function without you I'll prove my proposition and I'm sure you'll find We're a finite simple group of order two
I'm losing my identity I'm getting tensor every day And without loss of generality I will assume that you feel the same way
As a physics major, this is one of my favorite passages in any book:
There was no room for dust devils in the laws of physics, at least in the rigid form in which they were usually taught. There is a kind of unspoken collusion going on in mainstream science education: you get your competent but bored, insecure and hence stodgy teacher talking to an audience divided between engineering students, who going to be responsible for making bridges that won't fall down or airplanes that won't suddenly plunge vertically into the ground at six hundred miles an hour, and who by definition get sweaty palms and vindictive attitudes when their teacher suddenly veers off track and begins raving about wild and completely nonintuitive phenomena; and physics students, who derive much of their self-esteem from knowing that they are smarter and morally purer than the engineering students, and who by definition don't want to hear about anything that makes no fucking sense. This collusion results in the professor saying: (something along the lines of) dust is heavier than air, therefore it falls until it hits ground. That's all there is to know about dust. The engineers love it because they like their issues dead and crucified like butterflies under glass. The physicists love it because they want to think they understand everything. No one asks difficult questions. And outside the windows, the dust devils continue to gambol across the campus.
If you put enough elephants in one place, you can shift the rotation of the planet!
If you covered all the land on one hemisphere of the earth with elephants, you could shift the axis of rotation by perhaps a foot.
But the actual point around which the axis is rotating already wobbles over the course of a year or so in an irregular circle up to 50 feet across. (there are also other drifts over the course of centuries).
This means the "North Pole" you see in pictures (I think there's a barber post stuck in the South Pole) is a rough average, and the actual pole could be yards away. It exists precisely, but it wanders.
If you put enough elephants in one place, you can shift the rotation of the planet!
(This looks like a job for Mythbusters!)
I once calculated that if you spin around in an office chair, you rob the day of about 10^-35 seconds.
Of course, that's if you spin counterclockwise. Clockwise slows the earth down and lengthens the day.
If you wanna be precise, multiply by the sine of your latitude -- on the equator, it has no effect.
Of course, if you want to be precise, do the calculation yourself. I worked it out a long time ago while sitting in a spinning chair at a long overnight security guard shift. It might've been 1/10^35th of a DAY, or something. It's probably right to within a factor of ten million (10^7) and depends on how fat you are and how you hold your arms and legs.
Slashdot Mirror
I live in the United States, but I haven't really kept up with news or politics in the last five years or so (I've been pretty busy). I assume everything's roughly as it was last time I checked. So, situation's not bad! We killed the Clipper Chip and stopped Big Brother.
I should check and see what this new president has been up to.
This has far less to do with Linux business usefulness, per se, as it does with IBM's continued attempts to publicize Linux to the larger world (see their Super Bowl ads).
Which is a noble goal, certainly.
Looks like the site is slashdotted pretty badly.
. . . I hope the gals are okay!
Sure, you could conceivably make a moving movie about some accountant from Denver being whipped to death for three bloody hours. But I find it hard to imagine it working. My point is that people found meaning in The Passion because it was about Jesus dying for them and for his and their belief. If you take that away it becomes a bondage flick. Which, of course, can be good and meaningful, but not in the same way.
Similarly, Narnia becomes yet another fantasy battle movie. Could be good, but it wouldn't be for the same reason as the original.
My bad.
I'm actually worried that the movie won't have a strong enough Christian/religious theme.
Now, I'm an athiest, brought up Quaker, with little interest in spreading Christianity or anything.
But I read the books before I could understand the whole Christian allegory thing. I loved them. I reread them later, understood, and felt betrayed. Then I matured enough to where I could read them a third time and not take it so hard. And I realize that the whole feel of the stories, the idea that they had weight and importance and weren't just some guys who had beef with each other, that came straight out of the religious treatment of the characters.
If Aslan isn't God, and the White Witch is just some woman who wants to rule this place, the story becomes a cheesy special-effects battle movie. Yay, Dungeons and Dragons. If they can try to instill some kind of reverence and awe, and a feeling that these people are taking part in a larger struggle, that what is happening matters, I think the story can carry itself a lot better.
If you can get over the fact that it's about Christianity, of course.
I never saw The Passion, and I don't think it's a great idea for a movie, and so forth. But think how much more pointless a film it would be if the guy who was being tortured and suffering wasn't Jesus.
Given a word $word, this counts the syllables with something like 98% accuracy:
$word=~s/^[^a-zA-Z]+//g; #make lowercase
my @count=$word=~/[aeiouy]+/gi; # base count is # of vowel groups
my @trailinge=$word=~/[e]$/gi; # count traiing Es (-1 to syllable count)
my @trailinged=$word=~/ed$/gi; # count trailing EDs (-1)
my @threevowels=$word=~/[aeiou]{3}/gi; # count three vowels in a row (+1)
my @ded=$word=~/ded$/gi; # if word ends in 'ded', trailing ED rule doesn't apply, add one
my @apot=$word=~/sn't/gi; # count apostraphes (+1)
my $total = scalar @count - (scalar @trailinge + scalar @trailinged) + (scalar @threevowels + scalar @ded + scalar @apot); #sum various rules to arrive at total
if($total
Wait, it doesn't seem like that would work at all. It doesn't look like Xenon has a density anywhere near that of water. And even if it did, as a gas Xenon would be compressable, which means the density would vary dramatically with depth -- you'd have a particular height you floated at, and going down ten meters would double the pressure and the density and the lift. If it really had a density close to that of water, it would act like (compressable) water, and you'd float on it at a certain level. But it doesn't and you wouldn't.
I once wrote a syllable-counting script to find unintentional haikus in IRC logs, and this was my favorite:
sweet baby jesus
no more room in your manger
tucked in my anus
Which is, I believe, intentional and perhaps not original, but nonetheless hilarious.
I'm sorry, heirarchical folders is an other. There are a lot of paradigms.
Personally, I don't see tagging and searching as competing Internet search philosophies. One is the table of contents and one is the index. You use both, just at different times depending on your need.
That's not a dichotomy, it's a single system. Tag-search is one side of the spectrum and heirarchical folders is the other. You create and search tags. "Looking" at a tag is just a simple search.
Tag-search systems will take over as the file/data-storage paradigm in a whole lot of areas. We're just seeing the start of this. Rarely do I make predictions like this, but I've been quite sure of this for some time. Spotlight, del.icio.us, and iTunes are just the start.
Has anyone out there ever used a usb drive this small, and was it effective?
It's convenient, but the bits are so small.
I never thought I'd find myself saying this, but I just don't think the internet is weird enough.
In American universities (outside of the medical schools) being Chair of the department is usually not that big a deal. It isn't like some European universities where the Chair is really the person who runs the show.
For example, at my school, the chair of the Physics department cycles through the faculty, changing hands every three years.
On first glance, this seemed pretty stupid. It's not like I would say "oh, I have access to the lyrics, I don't need the song now."
However, if I'm gonna be pirating music anyway, access to the lyrics for free makes buying the album that much less attractive. The idea is that the lyrics are bundled with the album, and distributing them for free (to be found via the internet) makes music piracy that much more attractive, as it removes a perk of buying the CD.
However, this is still a stupid battle to fight. Google = lyric finder. You can't keep short blocks of text anyone can type up a secret. But they do have reasons for fighting it besides general assholeness.
Dear Slashdot: Way to moderate me 'troll' when I post a serious question on a topic of great interest to me and am eagerly awaiting responses and discussion. Thanks.
However, the long and muscular tail, as well as other features of the nose and digestive system, are covered under several broad Microsoft patents. Extermination is expected to commence shortly.
I work on cryptography and information theory, I read Bruce Schneier, I have secure passwords and am suspicious of everything. I dabble in paranoia, read things like Free Culture and 2600, and am generally anti-The-Man.
That said, sometimes I can't really remember why I care if someone is gathering information on me. Sure, if a company or government monitors my browsing habits or watches where I drive, they can make ads targeted or develop a psychological profile, but what's the real downside? Why should I care if they know what I buy or where I drive? Sure, if I were running for office, it might help with a smear campaign, but other than that, what does it matter? And that's really the only example that comes to mind sometimes, Hoover threatening to release tapes of MLK having sex. But at that point, they're focusing on you as a public figure and breaking the law to gather particularly embarrassing information. For other stuff for the average Joe, what's the problem?
I'm sure everyone has examples. Remind me why I care if they're gathering databases on where we drive or what we do or who we are.
Seriously, remind me why I need privacy. I forget sometimes.
Next: Bill Oliver has been removed from his job as head of Bell South's Public Relations department.
Page 773, when Randy is looking at the parking lot where they are soon to divide up their grandparents' belongings. I had to find it once to type it up to a friend (because for some reason it didn't occur to me to google it).
As a physics major, I've always appreciated it a lot, and it reminds me not to shy away from examining things that I don't have a good framework for already.
Oh, come on, we can see right through that. It's just another sleazy attempt by Sun to acquire money in exchange for goods and services.
The nerve.
My favorite song of theirs is Finite Simple Group of Order Two, for the sheer audacity of cramming so many math puns into so few words. First three verses:
-- Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
If you covered all the land on one hemisphere of the earth with elephants, you could shift the axis of rotation by perhaps a foot.
But the actual point around which the axis is rotating already wobbles over the course of a year or so in an irregular circle up to 50 feet across. (there are also other drifts over the course of centuries).
This means the "North Pole" you see in pictures (I think there's a barber post stuck in the South Pole) is a rough average, and the actual pole could be yards away. It exists precisely, but it wanders.
I once calculated that if you spin around in an office chair, you rob the day of about 10^-35 seconds.
Of course, that's if you spin counterclockwise. Clockwise slows the earth down and lengthens the day.
If you wanna be precise, multiply by the sine of your latitude -- on the equator, it has no effect.
Of course, if you want to be precise, do the calculation yourself. I worked it out a long time ago while sitting in a spinning chair at a long overnight security guard shift. It might've been 1/10^35th of a DAY, or something. It's probably right to within a factor of ten million (10^7) and depends on how fat you are and how you hold your arms and legs.