Re:OMG! A sucker *is* born every minute!!!!
on
Spam Doesn't Work?
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· Score: 1
Funny as this may be:-) the math is utterly bogus.
I agree down to the point where you establish that there are 6e5 (NOT 6e6, as you say in the next paragraph) suckers on Earth.
Then you divide the number of suckers by the number of minutes in a year. This tells us nothing, except what number of suckers per birth minute per year. The calculation is only valid if each person lives 1 year only. It's as if you had said "There are 7 suckers on Earth. A week has seven days. A sucker is born every day!"
Now, according to worldpop.org, there are about 0.022 children, per person, per year born in this world. Multiplied by 6e9 persons, this makes 132 million people per year.
Now, acording to the premises 1/10,000:th of the people are suckers, which make 13.2 thousand/year. Divide the number of minutes per year by that and you will get the result:
Agree, agree, agree! That plane was pure science fiction when it first flew. It still looks improbable today...
100% titanium hull, I hear it leaked fuel like a sill on he runway, it needed to expand with friction heat just to seal up! Unbelievable speed and altitude.
A calls his counterpart B (shielded line), and says "Demon Tit Wonderful hentai, episode 5, x bytes!". A xors his file with the divx file and sends it to B. B gets the hentai from Kazaa and xors the data with it. Unbreakable (except for that shielded line of course)!
Re:DOS-box backspace of death
on
Pet Bugs?
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· Score: 1
The program may be boxed, but the box has an exploit... In Unix terms: Apparently, it's about the csrss.exe process which I gather is the DOS box. The backspace characters reset the 'cursor' to before the beginning of the text buffer, and the subsequent space causes a segv, crashing csrss. Unfortunately, csrss is considered a system vital process, so NT has a kernel panic over this.
The bug is even easier to cause by having a sequence of tabs before the backspaces. Each tab counts as one character in the buffer, but when removing them the pointer goes back 8 positions...
You should be able to cause this bug by simply using 'type' on a text file with a bunch of tabs, followed by the same amounts of backspaces, followed by a space. You have to have enough tabs to backspace past all previous output in the dos window (that's what your second program does, except it doesn't use the tab shortcut and so has to loop many times more. Change that string to "\t\b ").
This bug was first reported a couple of years ago. It affects every version of NT ever. Since NT4 won't get any more service packs it's permanently flawed. The bug pops up in many unexpected places. For instance you can make IIS crash the server by doing something like this.
Hmm... This machine is w2k. I'll post, then make a little experiment... I'll report back.
Re:Even if the physics are out of this world...
on
Physics in the Movies
·
· Score: 3, Funny
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, remember?
Now, if Arnie had fired both railguns simultaneously, in opposite directions...:-)
Late reply, no-one will read this but I must reply...
[many companies communicating using simple tab delimited text files] As an alternative, they could define a few (XML) formats using an identical grammar. Then all their systems could interact without having to write custom applications for each of the custom exchange formats that their accounting department escapee came up with.
If the many companies in your scenario could agree on a XML schema, they could just as easily have agreed on a fixed column width represention or a tab separated representation. The difference is that, yes, it is easier to modify the format with XML, but using XML properly in a non-modern environment (ie. 80% of large companies) is hell, plain and simple.
Have you ever tried to write you own XML validator/parser from scratch? In less than one week? I have. It wasn't funny. The result sort of worked. With this schema. If the input files are flawless. Any future modifications to that program will be tape and solder style.
XML is a ridicoulously overcomplex method of intercommunication. The hype says that if you just represent the data as XML, then anyone can read it, anytime! They don't mention the fact that this is only true if large numbers of people agree to use the same schemas which in reality they don't. Everyone invents their own representations. Translating is utter hell.
In order to get XML to really deliver, people have to agree on common schemas for every different kind of application. Just as people have always had to agree on common data transfer formats! There is nothing new and nothing good, and it's all horribly inefficient and unnesecarily complicated and convoluted.
PS. If you could recomend a XML framework for SCO-Unix (OpenServer 5) I would be extatic.
Green products might well be cheapest - if you use a more encompassing definition of 'cost'.
Yes!
Example: What is the cost of a $50 car, that has a 25% chance of killing you every time you take a drive in it? Isn't the true cost higher than that of a $50,000 BMW? Which is why you would rather buy the latter.
Re:Homer Simpsons puts it best:
on
Cradle to Cradle
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· Score: 1
A nuclear plant is a building. Are you saying that nuclear plants produce less energy than it takes to run them?
Re:It's all Human Nature
on
Cradle to Cradle
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You seem to be completely missing the point. Making a green product is harder. Therefore, it will be less cool or more expensive.
Even if you managed through sheer brain sweat to produce a product that is green, cheaper and cooler, then company B could just rip off your design and replace the eco-flogiston with spun plutonium, halving the price.
Suppose everyone, everywhere bought one Gizmo a day. You can select between the $1 standard Gizmo and the $2 Eco-Gizmo. Will most people but the standard version? Hell yes!
Unfortunately, that's exactly what people are doing in the real world. They don't bother the read the fine print on the standard Gizmo that says:
After buying 10.000 standard Gizmos, our friendly customer relations people will hunt you and your family down and kill you with very dull edged implements. Enjoy!
Your program obviously halts, it doesn't have any loops (except maybe in the undefined have-some-property function).
The classic proof that there are non-determinable program looks something like this. Suppose there is a function bool stops(program), that works in all cases. Take the following program:
prog(program p)
{
if (stops(p))
while (1);
else
exit 0;
}
Now (here's the real trick), run the program on itself.
Therefore, there can be no stops() function that works in all cases. I've never seen a good example of a non-determinable function/program though. The above poster thought he had, unfortunately his example wasn't very good:-)
About brains Vs turing machines. I do believe that the human mind can be simulated by a turing machine. OTOH, I think that the human brain uses (at least in part) quantum computations, which would mean that certain operations could be completed in polynomial time in a brain, whereas they would take exponential time in a turing machine.
Call it one last stubborn stand for human superiority. In fact, I'd be glad to be proven wrong, beacause then we could emulate brains in software in reasonable time. Which would mean immortality.
Suppose I have two systems. From system 1 I need to notify system 2 of personal data in the db that has been modified, so they can update their info.
First approach: select all persons that have been modified since last time. Write all their data to a file, one person per row, either using a fixed field width representation or a token seperated one. My C program that I wrote in 5 minutes creates the file, his Cobol program that he wrote in 1 hour reads the data, checks it and inserts it into his system.
Moron approach: Select all persons that have been modified since last time. Invent an XML schema to represent the data. Use 5 hours to write the DTD and the program the creates the XML data. Because we are feeling super-trendy, we send this by HTTP POST to (2) ala Soap.
To be cosher (2) now has to have a web server, CGI's that can handle Soap and store the parameters (in this case a file) on the file system, the ability to validate and parse the XML file, on a AS/400, no less.
Perhaps he has some helpful tools, perhaps he has to code a general XML parser himself, perhaps (more likely) he writes my name on the big list he has on the wall saying "People who *will* die".
He tries to get a XML system from the net in, say, Java, spends 5 days getting it to work, while coding the HTTP bits himself (which he does in only 40 hours. Yeah! What a coder!)
Unfortunately, his big-wigs have just been force-fed with XML propaganda, and have decided on their own, incompatible XML representation of the data... And he must write the XSL code and so forth.
(2) now moves my name, and those of his bosses, and some of the people at W3C from the "People who *will* die" list to the new "DIE DIE DIE DIEDIEDIE BLEED FUCKING PIGS!!!!!!!!!1!111!1!" list. And gets his AK-47 and goes out the door...
Net time/life cost:
Rational thinking: 1h5min
XML: 100+h plus 15 deaths and 150 wounded.
Yeah, I know. Even since I first heard his strange idiom, I kept hearing in my mind "Masta! Meesa hony!" Imagine his long, supple tounge wrapping around your... whatever... and perhaps reaching all the way into your... dunno...
I guess you missed that this 'quote' was indeed turned backwards compared to the original article. The original was
Terabit-per-square-inch hard drive areal densities, the goal for present magnetic recording research, will probably not be achieved with giant magnetoresistance (GMR) or with tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) technology.
Of course, all-the-literature-ever is rather small. If 100 million books where ever produced (probably a large overstatement), a book is about 150 pages, 3000 characters per page...
That makes 45 TB, packs with good compression to 1/10th, easily stored on any super computer fibre channel array (and next years HD's).
I want the same global terrain you had, in voxel graphics (so I can explore the interior as well.)
That's about 1000 YB (yottabytes, 10^24 (or 2^80, if we still haven't resolved the binary/decimal prefix issue)). Oh, and why are you satisfied with cm resolution? That would look really chunky, I want mm or better (multiply by 1000). In short: no, demand for memory/storage will not fall off any time soon. OTOH, if memory capacity continues to double every 18 months, we will reach yottabyte capacity in 22.5 years. Scary.
Technology using tunneling magnetoresitance (TMR) or giant magnetoresistance (GMR) will probably not achieve the present goal for magnetic recording research, hard drive densities of a terabit per square inch.
However, if you were to cover one eye and look at a 3D object, you get a totally different sense of that object...
Indeed. I used to play Quake like this all the time.
Tape one eye shut, place your head about 1 foot from the screen (that's where the FPS's generally assume your viewpoint is, in order to show reasonable amounts of the scenario to the sides). Now play.
Hey presto! Suddenly the graphics come to life and look like true 3d. Added bonuses are certain eye damage and looking like a retard.
> The question raised is, how does an > atheist 'get' anything out of anything?
Very much, thank you. See reality as it is. Make your own conclusions from it. Deduce your own morals. See the world, instead of having those rose tinted spectacles forced onto your nose.
So, how do you 'get' anything when all your understandings are, in fact, only laws from on high?
This microchip is just like all other microchips. It has certain physical and electrical properties. It helps render information on a computer. It does this slightly faster than previous microchips at a much greater price.
What is so fascinating about this to young, white males? It presents itself in many scenarios: cars are "tweaked" at the cost of hundreds of dollars for tiny percentages in "performance" (read: "speed") gain. Cooking appliances are bought that shave seconds off of cooking time. It's ridiculous.
Slow down, enjoy life. You'll get there when you get there. Enjoy the journey. Your graphics will be rendered in plenty of time, for now just enjoy the scenery.
This feminist opinionist is like any other feminist opinionist. They help to further equality of the sexes. She does this slightly better than previous ones while being much more boring.
What is so fascinating about this to young, white females? It presents itself in many scenarios: feminists that write bearly coherent jargon ridden articles in my morning paper 'DN'. Feminists that attack graphics cards trying to prove a point about genus.
Why don't you get that huge chip of your shoulder, enjoy life. Equality will happen more and more. Enjoy the journey. Your cause will be completed in time, for now just enjoy the scenery.
Spider-Man is way bigger than LotR to any person who has been an adolescent in the last decade. This movie has been putzing around, teasing fans for over a decade. I've been EAGERLY EXPECTING Spider-Man since I was 13, LotR doesn't even come close to the anticipation.
Not that this has anything to do with the quality of either movie.
Lord of the Rings is way bigger than SM to anyone who has been an adolescent in the last half century. The movie has been putzing around, teasing fans for over 15 years (and semi-filmed a couple of times). I've been EAGERLY EXPECTING Lord of the Rings since I was 6, SM doesn't even come close to the anticipation.
Not that this has anything to do with the quality of either movie.
PS. Also, S-M is a comic, LotR is frigging Littratchure!
Slashdot Mirror
Funny as this may be :-) the math is utterly bogus.
I agree down to the point where you establish that there are 6e5 (NOT 6e6, as you say in the next paragraph) suckers on Earth.
Then you divide the number of suckers by the number of minutes in a year. This tells us nothing, except what number of suckers per birth minute per year. The calculation is only valid if each person lives 1 year only. It's as if you had said "There are 7 suckers on Earth. A week has seven days. A sucker is born every day!"
Now, according to worldpop.org, there are about 0.022 children, per person, per year born in this world. Multiplied by 6e9 persons, this makes 132 million people per year.
Now, acording to the premises 1/10,000:th of the people are suckers, which make 13.2 thousand/year. Divide the number of minutes per year by that and you will get the result:
A sucker is (in fact) born every 39.84:th minute
QED
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your 0.02, so :P
Better change that signature, pronto :-)
PS. Nyah, nyah, nyah ;-)
Agree, agree, agree! That plane was pure science fiction when it first flew. It still looks improbable today...
100% titanium hull, I hear it leaked fuel like a sill on he runway, it needed to expand with friction heat just to seal up! Unbelievable speed and altitude.
<SouthPark>
We Japanese... Penis so small! Tiny! Pitiful! How can we ever do anything!
You American... Penis SO large! Huge penis! GIGANTIC penis! Let me call women!
Women: [Storming applause]
</SouthPark>
A calls his counterpart B (shielded line), and says "Demon Tit Wonderful hentai, episode 5, x bytes!". A xors his file with the divx file and sends it to B. B gets the hentai from Kazaa and xors the data with it. Unbreakable (except for that shielded line of course)!
And the other one is Yella Blacque?
The program may be boxed, but the box has an exploit... In Unix terms: Apparently, it's about the csrss.exe process which I gather is the DOS box. The backspace characters reset the 'cursor' to before the beginning of the text buffer, and the subsequent space causes a segv, crashing csrss. Unfortunately, csrss is considered a system vital process, so NT has a kernel panic over this.
The bug is even easier to cause by having a sequence of tabs before the backspaces. Each tab counts as one character in the buffer, but when removing them the pointer goes back 8 positions... You should be able to cause this bug by simply using 'type' on a text file with a bunch of tabs, followed by the same amounts of backspaces, followed by a space. You have to have enough tabs to backspace past all previous output in the dos window (that's what your second program does, except it doesn't use the tab shortcut and so has to loop many times more. Change that string to "\t\b ").
This bug was first reported a couple of years ago. It affects every version of NT ever. Since NT4 won't get any more service packs it's permanently flawed. The bug pops up in many unexpected places. For instance you can make IIS crash the server by doing something like this.
Hmm... This machine is w2k. I'll post, then make a little experiment... I'll report back.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, remember?
Now, if Arnie had fired both railguns simultaneously, in opposite directions... :-)
If the many companies in your scenario could agree on a XML schema, they could just as easily have agreed on a fixed column width represention or a tab separated representation. The difference is that, yes, it is easier to modify the format with XML, but using XML properly in a non-modern environment (ie. 80% of large companies) is hell, plain and simple.
Have you ever tried to write you own XML validator/parser from scratch? In less than one week? I have. It wasn't funny. The result sort of worked. With this schema. If the input files are flawless. Any future modifications to that program will be tape and solder style.
XML is a ridicoulously overcomplex method of intercommunication. The hype says that if you just represent the data as XML, then anyone can read it, anytime! They don't mention the fact that this is only true if large numbers of people agree to use the same schemas which in reality they don't. Everyone invents their own representations. Translating is utter hell.
In order to get XML to really deliver, people have to agree on common schemas for every different kind of application. Just as people have always had to agree on common data transfer formats! There is nothing new and nothing good, and it's all horribly inefficient and unnesecarily complicated and convoluted.
PS. If you could recomend a XML framework for SCO-Unix (OpenServer 5) I would be extatic.
f()... Gah! How could I have missed that! Slam! Slam! Slam! (Sound of me hitting myself over the head).
Reminds me of an anecdote from Scheme class:
One young searcher approached (insert famous Lisp guru here). Quoth he: "Please Master, reveal to me the secret of recursion!"
The master replied:
"To understand the secret of recursion, you must first understand the secret of recursion."
And so the young searcher was enlightened.
Yes!
Example: What is the cost of a $50 car, that has a 25% chance of killing you every time you take a drive in it? Isn't the true cost higher than that of a $50,000 BMW? Which is why you would rather buy the latter.
Listen to Radio Nectarine, computer music 24/7
A nuclear plant is a building. Are you saying that nuclear plants produce less energy than it takes to run them?
You seem to be completely missing the point. Making a green product is harder. Therefore, it will be less cool or more expensive.
Even if you managed through sheer brain sweat to produce a product that is green, cheaper and cooler, then company B could just rip off your design and replace the eco-flogiston with spun plutonium, halving the price.
Suppose everyone, everywhere bought one Gizmo a day. You can select between the $1 standard Gizmo and the $2 Eco-Gizmo. Will most people but the standard version? Hell yes!
Unfortunately, that's exactly what people are doing in the real world. They don't bother the read the fine print on the standard Gizmo that says:
Strange post.
Your program obviously halts, it doesn't have any loops (except maybe in the undefined have-some-property function).
The classic proof that there are non-determinable program looks something like this. Suppose there is a function bool stops(program), that works in all cases. Take the following program:
Now (here's the real trick), run the program on itself.
Therefore, there can be no stops() function that works in all cases. I've never seen a good example of a non-determinable function/program though. The above poster thought he had, unfortunately his example wasn't very good :-)
About brains Vs turing machines. I do believe that the human mind can be simulated by a turing machine. OTOH, I think that the human brain uses (at least in part) quantum computations, which would mean that certain operations could be completed in polynomial time in a brain, whereas they would take exponential time in a turing machine.
Call it one last stubborn stand for human superiority. In fact, I'd be glad to be proven wrong, beacause then we could emulate brains in software in reasonable time. Which would mean immortality.
Suppose I have two systems. From system 1 I need to notify system 2 of personal data in the db that has been modified, so they can update their info.
First approach: select all persons that have been modified since last time. Write all their data to a file, one person per row, either using a fixed field width representation or a token seperated one. My C program that I wrote in 5 minutes creates the file, his Cobol program that he wrote in 1 hour reads the data, checks it and inserts it into his system.
Moron approach: Select all persons that have been modified since last time. Invent an XML schema to represent the data. Use 5 hours to write the DTD and the program the creates the XML data. Because we are feeling super-trendy, we send this by HTTP POST to (2) ala Soap.
To be cosher (2) now has to have a web server, CGI's that can handle Soap and store the parameters (in this case a file) on the file system, the ability to validate and parse the XML file, on a AS/400, no less.
Perhaps he has some helpful tools, perhaps he has to code a general XML parser himself, perhaps (more likely) he writes my name on the big list he has on the wall saying "People who *will* die".
He tries to get a XML system from the net in, say, Java, spends 5 days getting it to work, while coding the HTTP bits himself (which he does in only 40 hours. Yeah! What a coder!)
Unfortunately, his big-wigs have just been force-fed with XML propaganda, and have decided on their own, incompatible XML representation of the data... And he must write the XSL code and so forth.
(2) now moves my name, and those of his bosses, and some of the people at W3C from the "People who *will* die" list to the new "DIE DIE DIE DIEDIEDIE BLEED FUCKING PIGS!!!!!!!!!1!111!1!" list. And gets his AK-47 and goes out the door...
Net time/life cost:
Rational thinking: 1h5min
XML: 100+h plus 15 deaths and 150 wounded.
Yeah, I know. Even since I first heard his strange idiom, I kept hearing in my mind "Masta! Meesa hony!" Imagine his long, supple tounge wrapping around your... whatever... and perhaps reaching all the way into your... dunno...
;-)
I guess you missed that this 'quote' was indeed turned backwards compared to the original article. The original was
And, yes, it works a lot better this way (IMHO).
Of course, all-the-literature-ever is rather small. If 100 million books where ever produced (probably a large overstatement), a book is about 150 pages, 3000 characters per page... That makes 45 TB, packs with good compression to 1/10th, easily stored on any super computer fibre channel array (and next years HD's).
I want the same global terrain you had, in voxel graphics (so I can explore the interior as well.)
That's about 1000 YB (yottabytes, 10^24 (or 2^80, if we still haven't resolved the binary/decimal prefix issue)). Oh, and why are you satisfied with cm resolution? That would look really chunky, I want mm or better (multiply by 1000). In short: no, demand for memory/storage will not fall off any time soon. OTOH, if memory capacity continues to double every 18 months, we will reach yottabyte capacity in 22.5 years. Scary.
Backwards you say? Good it is not?
Right you are. Work better backwards it does!
Indeed. I used to play Quake like this all the time.
Tape one eye shut, place your head about 1 foot from the screen (that's where the FPS's generally assume your viewpoint is, in order to show reasonable amounts of the scenario to the sides). Now play.
Hey presto! Suddenly the graphics come to life and look like true 3d. Added bonuses are certain eye damage and looking like a retard.
> The question raised is, how does an
> atheist 'get' anything out of anything?
Very much, thank you. See reality as it is.
Make your own conclusions from it.
Deduce your own morals.
See the world, instead of having those rose
tinted spectacles forced onto your nose.
So, how do you 'get' anything when all your
understandings are, in fact, only laws from on
high?
This microchip is just like all other microchips. It has certain physical and electrical properties. It helps render information on a computer. It does this slightly faster than previous microchips at a much greater price.
What is so fascinating about this to young, white males? It presents itself in many scenarios: cars are "tweaked" at the cost of hundreds of dollars for tiny percentages in "performance" (read: "speed") gain. Cooking appliances are bought that shave seconds off of cooking time. It's ridiculous.
Slow down, enjoy life. You'll get there when you get there. Enjoy the journey. Your graphics will be rendered in plenty of time, for now just enjoy the scenery.
This feminist opinionist is like any other feminist opinionist. They help to further equality of the sexes. She does this slightly better than previous ones while being much more boring.
What is so fascinating about this to young, white females? It presents itself in many scenarios: feminists that write bearly coherent jargon ridden articles in my morning paper 'DN'. Feminists that attack graphics cards trying to prove a point about genus.
Why don't you get that huge chip of your shoulder, enjoy life. Equality will happen more and more. Enjoy the journey. Your cause will be completed in time, for now just enjoy the scenery.
<anal> It isn't "rought", it's right! </anal> ;-)
Kow: I swing from building to building!
BetterWoman: Interesting (I guess), how does it pay?
Kow: Action is my reward! And Justice!
BetterWoman:
NO CARRIER
Not that this has anything to do with the quality of either movie.
PS. Also, S-M is a comic, LotR is frigging Littratchure!