I had that job, 2 years. It's fucking college, you'd think they'd know how to use a trash can. I once removed a used condom from the floor (which I did with a dustpan, which later got bleached.) I probably should have bitched to the RD, but oh well.
Still though, not as bad as bailing hay, laying insulation, or sanding drywall on the ceiling...
Photocopy a bunch of your junk mail every day for a week (credit card offers, sweepstakes, fliers, etc.) and write a little rant with each one and send it to her.:-D Of course, you have to write it under the guise that you think she can do something about it.
Too bad the sequencing research these days is not so much focusing on fast sequencing (though that is of course still a major concern), as it is on accurate sequencing. One of the problems bio-folk are encountering is that the human genome is relatively easy to sequence: you can get all your DNA from one individual (so you only need to worry about getting two unique DNA sequences getting mixed up in the final result, one from the male and female parents) and there isn't as much repetition as compared to say, mosquito genomes. Further, when studying things like mosquitos, the shotgunning techniques currently need to use DNA from whole portions of a population, say 50 or more individuals (AFAIK), so your final result doesn't really represent any one member; a lot of useful information is lost this way.
Anyway, just my semi-educated two cents. I'm CS, so what do I know? Well, I'm told it's NP hard, so... good luck with getting that 10 Mil and still having an accurate result.
Careful, you'll be giving the government ideas. I mean, imagine if they hooked up with Match.com...
Now, with Match.com, our (government) employees listen in on all of your phone conversations, looking for the best romantic match for you! (and checking to see if you're a terrorist.)
The masses will be all over it! (This advertisement brought to you by Match.com, CIA, TSA, DHS, AT&T, FBI, GOP, and Little Richard.)
As true as that may be, there's certainly been a chilling affect regarding exercising rights, and I would argue it is a strong one. While the following relates specifically to firearms rights, I think similar arguments could be put forth regarding people's hesitation to exercise rights of free speech, assembly, and basically just ask questions.
Related to the topic at hand, I grew up target shooting various kinds of weaponry. I've been on my own a few years now, and would like to get a gun or two of my own so I can continue the hobby. So far, I haven't, and the primary reason (the only reason, really) is that I fear being on a list of registered firearms owners in this environment. Prior to the early nineties, I don't think I would have felt this way. Then again, I am probably just too young to remember the world before that.
(It's my opinion that much of this terrorism fear spreading really began in the early nineties era with Waco, Oklahoma City, and Ted Kaczynski's later "works." I think this is also possibly the reason so much effort is directored toward citizens, while the mantra remains "the foreign terrorists." But again, what do I know?)
Of course, I could _not_ register, which these days is practically asking for a few years in the pen.
Looks like one way or another, I'm just going to have to grow a pair, or let my rights rot...
My (relatively uneducated opinion) is that you are right. If you're going to be interesting in the behavior of groups at a suffiently high level, in many situations it is plenty to simply simulate what an AI might statistially do rather than implement actual AI's.
For instance, I was just the other week talking to a biologist who wants to simulate how trees migrate over generations. The problem was tricky because she wanted to model each individual acorn along with squirrels and birds and possibly even terrain, even though only a small known percentage of the acorns will make it to germination. I suggested modeling not every acorn, but only those percentages which survive, and distribute them according to various distributions (eg birds carry an acorn an average of X yards with standard deviaton Y), greatly reducing computation costs.
I believe that often, the only argument for actual modeling of each agent is "correctness," the idea being that statistical models are only as good as your statistics. Then again, AI models are only as good as your behavior rules... and with the number of variables and the subtle differences small changes to them can make, this can be difficult.
Yahoo's financial site has data. (The only free place I've found too.) finance.yahoo.com, look up a quote, click the graph, on the bottom of the page: "historical prices." Set ranges and frequencies for data, then at the bottom again, "download as spreadsheet," CSV.
Given the vast resources available to those in power (information control and management as well as the very huge advances in lethal and non-lethal weapons technology (read: crowd control)) it's much easier these days for small numbers of people to control ever larger numbers of others than it was in the past.
I guess the main weapon left to the masses is that of information dissemination, and the main limitation for advanced oppressive governments is limited prison space.
Yeah, as much as I'm tempted to say that Yahoo is 16% more evil than Google, I think it's more likely that they are equally evil - Yahoo is just more competent at it.
Unless of course, Google's poor censorship is on purpose, and it's their way of bringing freedom to the area. Then um, way to go?
I always wanted to have the ability to "hash" songs, and come up with an algorithm that would be robust enough to work across multiple codecs and encoding options, different (relative) normalizations, and maybe even be able to handle empty space at the beginning and/or end of the song. (I would think by making a hash based on values relative to sound signatures within the clip this might be possible, but I don't really know how this stuff works.)
Anyway, besides obvious RIAA spyware being able to catalogue the music you have on your computer, report back, and send you a bill, something like musicbrainz.org could have hashes for all the songs in its database. That way, you could have a program to churn through all of your poorly named and tagged audio collection, and catalogue and tag it. Or, something like iTunes could do so dynamically, and use last.fm or whatever to tell you what sorts of other music would match your library.
In the U.S., Dish Networks satellite set-top boxes do a similar thing. There are two different types of receivers, a single tv receiver and a dual (which allows watching independent channels on two tv's.) which use the same base price of service. They say you are supposed to have a phone line hooked up to either kind, but if fail to do it, they will actually charge you an extra $5 a month, but only if you have the dual. (Get that? No phone line and single reciever = no extra charge, no phone line and dual reciever = 5 dollar charge.) From what the service guy who exchanged my dual for a single told me, they do it so they know if you are just running the other tv wire to say an adjacent apartment, thus stealing (er, pirating?) service. But as he clearly pointed out, how would they even know if this was going on? So I think it's for stat's collection.
Anyway, my parents don't have a phone line hooked up to theirs, and they order the occasional pay-per-view by dialing a number on their cellphones and entering some codes.
As an aside, I had my dual changed to a single because a) I didn't want to pay an extra 5 a month and b) the dual receiver I had had a "software bug" in the new revision for that hardware, causing the picture to freeze up for several seconds every few minutes. D'oh. To fix this, they did offer to hook up two single receivers for the same price, but I would still have the $5 no phone line fee.
While I can understand the desire for the project in the long run I think it's going to look as wasteful as the number of railroad tracks that have been abandoned across the US, and in about 1/10th the time.
I dunno, those railroad tracks might look wasteful now, but they were a huge part of industry and economy in the past. Just because something is going to be obsolete in the future (near or far) I don't think it's necessarily not worth doing.
Railroads entered in an era of ubiquitous travel, perhaps this google thing will enter in the era of ubiquitous net access. (As another stated, some areas have no access to broadband at all.) Personally, my hope is maybe if these sorts of networks are open and usable enough, it will give comcast et. al. the overpriced slap they deserve.
Speaking of which, I just this morning got their old AllofMp3 Explorer client (not yet alltunes unfortunately) working in linux using crossover office.
To go further off topic, 40 bucks (the cost of ~four cd's) for crossover office (which rocks, by the way) is a liscence cost I will totally be willing to pay for in 30 days when my trial runs out. Makes me feel good that some companies actually price IP products sanely.
Arguing that some providers doing crap like this will actually spur competition, in the end making the net better off for the end users. Not sure if I agree, though hearing about the amount of bittorrent traffic there is gives hope to idea that those using it will switch to more open providers, thus giving those providers a market edge.
Nice. For working with a music library, you might enjoy Music Player Daemon. There are a bunch of control clients for several platforms, including web-based clients, and command line clients (great for scriptability). The current CVS version also supports streaming, which is fun.
In many ways, it is a part of the market. For instance, the government mentioned that builds roads uses resources and hires employees to do work just like any business would. In an REALLY free market, the company that built the roads would charge the public (individuals) for use, whereas the government simply charges everyone, in the form of taxes. Fortunately, the intersection of poeple who drive and people who pay taxes is quite large.
Yes, the government is a major sponsor of business, and when acting as a business itself can often help the market. But sponsoring businesses themselves as a lawmaking entity does affect the free market, as what is good for businesses isn't always good for the market. If Google was in fact devalued because of the DoJ's request (which was probably not the case as others have pointed out), it would be a prime example. Another would be corporations such as the much hated Sony propped up by legislation; I like to believe Sony would be in deep shit in a more free market.
For the record, I am not an economist, I am merely "thinking out loud." Also for the record, I am not a very good anarcho-capitalist either - I tend to like certain government muddlings such as antitrust laws.
This is of course anecdotal, but it's all I can offer...
I'm generally a fan of beer in general, and I drink both regular and NA beer. Sometimes I drink beer (or wine or...) to get a buzz, but most times I find myself just wanting to drink something tasty that's not sweet. In fact, I've got half a six pack of Kaliber in the fridge right now, right next to a couple of Leinenkugel's.
Unless they automatically copy every new file they encouter to themselves (meaning they'd have to be HUGE) I bet routing would be a problem. "User Error 719: No Route to Host/File Not Found. Please walk to nearest Starbucks and Hang out with more People."
I'm fairly sure any kind of ad-hoc mesh network with any type of standard routing protocol would be brought to its knees by the frequency of connection change.
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I had that job, 2 years. It's fucking college, you'd think they'd know how to use a trash can. I once removed a used condom from the floor (which I did with a dustpan, which later got bleached.) I probably should have bitched to the RD, but oh well.
Still though, not as bad as bailing hay, laying insulation, or sanding drywall on the ceiling...
Photocopy a bunch of your junk mail every day for a week (credit card offers, sweepstakes, fliers, etc.) and write a little rant with each one and send it to her. :-D Of course, you have to write it under the guise that you think she can do something about it.
Too bad the sequencing research these days is not so much focusing on fast sequencing (though that is of course still a major concern), as it is on accurate sequencing. One of the problems bio-folk are encountering is that the human genome is relatively easy to sequence: you can get all your DNA from one individual (so you only need to worry about getting two unique DNA sequences getting mixed up in the final result, one from the male and female parents) and there isn't as much repetition as compared to say, mosquito genomes. Further, when studying things like mosquitos, the shotgunning techniques currently need to use DNA from whole portions of a population, say 50 or more individuals (AFAIK), so your final result doesn't really represent any one member; a lot of useful information is lost this way.
Anyway, just my semi-educated two cents. I'm CS, so what do I know? Well, I'm told it's NP hard, so... good luck with getting that 10 Mil and still having an accurate result.
Careful, you'll be giving the government ideas. I mean, imagine if they hooked up with Match.com...
Now, with Match.com, our (government) employees listen in on all of your phone conversations, looking for the best romantic match for you! (and checking to see if you're a terrorist.)
The masses will be all over it! (This advertisement brought to you by Match.com, CIA, TSA, DHS, AT&T, FBI, GOP, and Little Richard.)
As true as that may be, there's certainly been a chilling affect regarding exercising rights, and I would argue it is a strong one. While the following relates specifically to firearms rights, I think similar arguments could be put forth regarding people's hesitation to exercise rights of free speech, assembly, and basically just ask questions.
Related to the topic at hand, I grew up target shooting various kinds of weaponry. I've been on my own a few years now, and would like to get a gun or two of my own so I can continue the hobby. So far, I haven't, and the primary reason (the only reason, really) is that I fear being on a list of registered firearms owners in this environment. Prior to the early nineties, I don't think I would have felt this way. Then again, I am probably just too young to remember the world before that.
(It's my opinion that much of this terrorism fear spreading really began in the early nineties era with Waco, Oklahoma City, and Ted Kaczynski's later "works." I think this is also possibly the reason so much effort is directored toward citizens, while the mantra remains "the foreign terrorists." But again, what do I know?)
Of course, I could _not_ register, which these days is practically asking for a few years in the pen.
Looks like one way or another, I'm just going to have to grow a pair, or let my rights rot...
My (relatively uneducated opinion) is that you are right. If you're going to be interesting in the behavior of groups at a suffiently high level, in many situations it is plenty to simply simulate what an AI might statistially do rather than implement actual AI's.
For instance, I was just the other week talking to a biologist who wants to simulate how trees migrate over generations. The problem was tricky because she wanted to model each individual acorn along with squirrels and birds and possibly even terrain, even though only a small known percentage of the acorns will make it to germination. I suggested modeling not every acorn, but only those percentages which survive, and distribute them according to various distributions (eg birds carry an acorn an average of X yards with standard deviaton Y), greatly reducing computation costs.
I believe that often, the only argument for actual modeling of each agent is "correctness," the idea being that statistical models are only as good as your statistics. Then again, AI models are only as good as your behavior rules... and with the number of variables and the subtle differences small changes to them can make, this can be difficult.
Stunning pictures! I know very little about cars or racing, but I would have loved to have been out there...
Yahoo's financial site has data. (The only free place I've found too.) finance.yahoo.com, look up a quote, click the graph, on the bottom of the page: "historical prices." Set ranges and frequencies for data, then at the bottom again, "download as spreadsheet," CSV.
Given the vast resources available to those in power (information control and management as well as the very huge advances in lethal and non-lethal weapons technology (read: crowd control)) it's much easier these days for small numbers of people to control ever larger numbers of others than it was in the past.
I guess the main weapon left to the masses is that of information dissemination, and the main limitation for advanced oppressive governments is limited prison space.
Just my measly two cents.
Yeah, as much as I'm tempted to say that Yahoo is 16% more evil than Google, I think it's more likely that they are equally evil - Yahoo is just more competent at it.
Unless of course, Google's poor censorship is on purpose, and it's their way of bringing freedom to the area. Then um, way to go?
Well, it was one thing when they started tracking what subversive books I've checked out from libraries.
But, now that they'll be able to know that we own all 10 seasons of Friends..... they've gone too far!!!
I always wanted to have the ability to "hash" songs, and come up with an algorithm that would be robust enough to work across multiple codecs and encoding options, different (relative) normalizations, and maybe even be able to handle empty space at the beginning and/or end of the song. (I would think by making a hash based on values relative to sound signatures within the clip this might be possible, but I don't really know how this stuff works.)
Anyway, besides obvious RIAA spyware being able to catalogue the music you have on your computer, report back, and send you a bill, something like musicbrainz.org could have hashes for all the songs in its database. That way, you could have a program to churn through all of your poorly named and tagged audio collection, and catalogue and tag it. Or, something like iTunes could do so dynamically, and use last.fm or whatever to tell you what sorts of other music would match your library.
Yummy.
In the U.S., Dish Networks satellite set-top boxes do a similar thing. There are two different types of receivers, a single tv receiver and a dual (which allows watching independent channels on two tv's.) which use the same base price of service. They say you are supposed to have a phone line hooked up to either kind, but if fail to do it, they will actually charge you an extra $5 a month, but only if you have the dual. (Get that? No phone line and single reciever = no extra charge, no phone line and dual reciever = 5 dollar charge.) From what the service guy who exchanged my dual for a single told me, they do it so they know if you are just running the other tv wire to say an adjacent apartment, thus stealing (er, pirating?) service. But as he clearly pointed out, how would they even know if this was going on? So I think it's for stat's collection.
Anyway, my parents don't have a phone line hooked up to theirs, and they order the occasional pay-per-view by dialing a number on their cellphones and entering some codes.
As an aside, I had my dual changed to a single because a) I didn't want to pay an extra 5 a month and b) the dual receiver I had had a "software bug" in the new revision for that hardware, causing the picture to freeze up for several seconds every few minutes. D'oh. To fix this, they did offer to hook up two single receivers for the same price, but I would still have the $5 no phone line fee.
While I can understand the desire for the project in the long run I think it's going to look as wasteful as the number of railroad tracks that have been abandoned across the US, and in about 1/10th the time.
I dunno, those railroad tracks might look wasteful now, but they were a huge part of industry and economy in the past. Just because something is going to be obsolete in the future (near or far) I don't think it's necessarily not worth doing.
Railroads entered in an era of ubiquitous travel, perhaps this google thing will enter in the era of ubiquitous net access. (As another stated, some areas have no access to broadband at all.) Personally, my hope is maybe if these sorts of networks are open and usable enough, it will give comcast et. al. the overpriced slap they deserve.
Speaking of which, I just this morning got their old AllofMp3 Explorer client (not yet alltunes unfortunately) working in linux using crossover office.
To go further off topic, 40 bucks (the cost of ~four cd's) for crossover office (which rocks, by the way) is a liscence cost I will totally be willing to pay for in 30 days when my trial runs out. Makes me feel good that some companies actually price IP products sanely.
Interesting article: http://www.reason.com/links/links041006.shtml
Arguing that some providers doing crap like this will actually spur competition, in the end making the net better off for the end users. Not sure if I agree, though hearing about the amount of bittorrent traffic there is gives hope to idea that those using it will switch to more open providers, thus giving those providers a market edge.
I used to use token ring, but I was never very good at it. I was always fucking up the rotation.
I only barely understood the original post, but would like more info. Any good links, for someone who's not exactly into economics?
Nice. For working with a music library, you might enjoy Music Player Daemon. There are a bunch of control clients for several platforms, including web-based clients, and command line clients (great for scriptability). The current CVS version also supports streaming, which is fun.
Well, somebody should at least run it and let us know which CSS bugs we should start learning work-arounds for :D
Why isn't the government a part of the market?
In many ways, it is a part of the market. For instance, the government mentioned that builds roads uses resources and hires employees to do work just like any business would. In an REALLY free market, the company that built the roads would charge the public (individuals) for use, whereas the government simply charges everyone, in the form of taxes. Fortunately, the intersection of poeple who drive and people who pay taxes is quite large.
Yes, the government is a major sponsor of business, and when acting as a business itself can often help the market. But sponsoring businesses themselves as a lawmaking entity does affect the free market, as what is good for businesses isn't always good for the market. If Google was in fact devalued because of the DoJ's request (which was probably not the case as others have pointed out), it would be a prime example. Another would be corporations such as the much hated Sony propped up by legislation; I like to believe Sony would be in deep shit in a more free market.
For the record, I am not an economist, I am merely "thinking out loud." Also for the record, I am not a very good anarcho-capitalist either - I tend to like certain government muddlings such as antitrust laws.
Try it out. I know it's for gentoo, but there is a nice howto here: Anonymous web browsing / instant messaging etc.
Yes, it is a little slow, but nothing like freenet. Just slow enough to be too annoying to use consistantly - for me, anyway.
This is of course anecdotal, but it's all I can offer...
I'm generally a fan of beer in general, and I drink both regular and NA beer. Sometimes I drink beer (or wine or...) to get a buzz, but most times I find myself just wanting to drink something tasty that's not sweet. In fact, I've got half a six pack of Kaliber in the fridge right now, right next to a couple of Leinenkugel's.
Unless they automatically copy every new file they encouter to themselves (meaning they'd have to be HUGE) I bet routing would be a problem. "User Error 719: No Route to Host/File Not Found. Please walk to nearest Starbucks and Hang out with more People."
I'm fairly sure any kind of ad-hoc mesh network with any type of standard routing protocol would be brought to its knees by the frequency of connection change.
Maybe Tom Cruise can buy one so he and Katie can see what the hell's wrong with him in the comfort of their own home.
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all night. (Metaphorically.)