Oh come on. The problems in CS are the same today as they were 100 years ago: "how do we compute and how efficienct can it get?" Alot of people grew up reading popular science accounts of the famous people who started computation theory in the early 1990s that did as much idiolizing the individuals as explaining the theory they created. But these people only lived a generation-or-two ago. I mean christ Godel was still alive in the 1970s. So I don't see whats so hard about reading the great papers--the language of the 1930s is almost identical to today's.
Wait, I do have a point. Which is this: the biggest problem in math is trying to find a good enough anaology for a problem that seems unsolvable (not in the technical sense). And what you'll get from reading the original papers is these famous people explaining their analogy and why the other anaologies of the time aren't appropriate. I mean these are just regular people working these ideas out over decades and decades, in turn supported by thousands and thousands of others doing the same. By reading the papers, you get both sides of the story, rather than just "oh, this theorem says this".
That being said, this book by Gregory Chaitin, and his other writings as well, relate the limits of human/mathematical knowledge to programming languages. It is very easy to read, too. And Godel's paper: well everyone is intimidated by it, but 3/4 of the paper is just him writing 45 different programs, and then using those 45 to write the 46th, which is his famous theorem.
You're assuming that the contestants were knowingly doing it for the money and not just for the hell of it, or the challenge. Besides the top placers will probably get a job out of it, if they don't have one already.
I wish topcoder would let people write in Common Lisp or something more fun than Java, C++, and fucking C#. Since any problem solved is just going to have to be rewritten anyway when it is implemented in the real world (or on google.com), you'd think they'd allow people more freedom than OO styles. I mean, Lisp can do OO, too!
I haven't been able to figure this out either. However the Google Puzzle Championship seems somehow related to the Code Jam, and the Puzzle Championship has posted their problems. Its probally speculation whether the problems sets are in any way related.
Can anyone tell me if this Jess is related in any way to the JESS language that runs Warcraft 3?;) They are not exactly the same but I'm trying to figure out if, say, the WC3 version is in any way based off Jess.
Well evolution isn't species based, its individual-and-"gene" based. There are alot of species that tend to kill themselves quite a bit, but it's all part of the game. As long as after the nuclear holocaust 1 guy is left with about 100 women, it really won't matter to that guy (nor evolution) that the rest of the species butchered itself!
Nevermind if he had bothered to include all of the human species, as in those of us who lived some 10,000-100,000 years ago! Saying that humanity didn't exist or do much before 800BC is like saying computers didn't exist until the G5 came along. This book is pure bullshit.
You might all be interested to know that "communist" is actually slang for "communalist". Now, tell me, who the hell could possibly be against anything "communal"? I mean, would you go down and bomb villages in South America knowing their only crime was that they wanted to be 'communal', or would it be easier since they're "communist"?
Well, the Toronto Stock Exchange has a habit of hosting some of the more risky and illegeal companies of the world that are looking for funding--in fact if you're the government looking for, say, some mercenaries to hire, or a mercenary company looking to develop the mine you just nabbed, Toronto is the place to be. A great deal of backwater business flows through that exchange that has nothing to do with Canada.
I'm not sure how individuals working as head hunters compare to companies that place contractors/with option to hire, but I'm fresh out of school and looking for programming work--some friends suggested I look into "Tek Systems" (http://www.teksystems.com) and "Rober Half" (http://www.roberthalftechnology.com)...has anyone here used these companies before? Are they good? Any advice? I hear that alot of programmers get their start through contracting work with the option to hire, is this true?
The same thing, and then some, is also available in CLisp. Nevermind being easier to code, easier to read, easier to debug, easier to port, and, while we're talking about byte code compilers, Clisp has some damn fast compilers out there, equivilent to C and C++ speeds.;)
There have already been numerous security and maintenance problems with the David-Besse Nuclear Plant...the plant has come much closer to melting down before this stupid event. See http://www.ohiocitizen.org/campaigns/electric/nucf ront.html.
But, this power has often been used for less noble purposes. It has also been used for political and economic purposes to spy on individuals who are not involved in international terrorism or plots against a national government. Some suspected uses are:
Target calls from U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond.
Monitor anti-Viewnam war leaders such as Jane Fonda and Dr. Benjamin Spock.
Monitor Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver
Monitor Amnesty International organization
Monitor Greenpeace organization
Monitor Christian Aid organization
Margaret Thatcher requested to have two government ministers monitored
Margaret Thatcher ordered observation of the parent company of the London Observer after publication of negative articles
Kissinger used NSA to intercept messages from rival Secretary of State William Rogers
Monitor phone calls of Maryland Congressman, Michael Barnes
Menwith Hill station received the 1991 "Station of the Year" prize for its role in the Gulf War.
Monitoring delegates of the five-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference
Monitoring Mexican trade representatives during the NAFTA trade negotiations
I don't think that Sterling is right when he argues that Total Information Awareness will bring on some new rash of "KGB style coups." Some of you might remember that the NSA has been evesdropping on Congressmen for years (even on the staunchly pro-Defense-Military congressmen) and the CIA regularly keeps full files on all Congressmen with all of their dirty little secrets. The reason that there hasn't been a series of coups yet (well, ignore the 9-11 coup for now...) is that its far easier to blackmail people into having them do _your_ dirty work than to rat them out entirely. The only thing TIA will do is increase the leverage of the executive branch over the rest of society.
wyrd. BBS's rocked. I still remember LoR and Exitilus (so many holes!) and Falcon's Eye----there was nothing like the BBS. So safe and local and down-to-earth.
"Washington:
President Bush today declared a new front in the War on Terrorism, citing CIA documents claiming the existence of Chineese terror training camps based on the moon.
In retaliation, the Administration ordered the first ever bombing of the moon.
The Chinese, startled at the discovery of U.S. missiles in space, subsequently nuked the West Coast."
The basic idea is that the probability of highly compressible data resulting from a algorithmic process is much higher than one that would result from a random process.
The Japanese may not be the best example of fiscal responsibility: their economy has been in the crapper for a decade, due in no small part to their banks' refusal to default the bad loans they made in the 80's. A lot of their prosperity was manufactured by banks giving out loans to people who had no business getting them. Sound familiar?
You're forgetting (or not mentioning) the fact that Japan has jack for a military. Some countries (ahem ahem) in dire financial straits, have found that its cheaper to just invade other countries to relieve economic stress...Japan in the 90s could have gone south and checked out the oil around the Spratley Islands, and then used this to lessen their recession. However, China was already there and China's military is much larger than Japans. Hence the continued recession.
I completely agree. People have been trying this approach now (correlating Riemann zeta and quantum mechanics), and frankly, I just don't buy that approach. I mean, every physicist knows that their equations are only approximately correct, so how the hell can they directly apply to pure math? Maybe in a year or two someone'll squeeze it out of this paper, but this one doesn't cut it.
Besides, everyone knows the problem is undecidable anyway:)
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing actually hit the space station, and everything is fine. See here, here, here, or just skip them all and see Google.
Wait, I do have a point. Which is this: the biggest problem in math is trying to find a good enough anaology for a problem that seems unsolvable (not in the technical sense). And what you'll get from reading the original papers is these famous people explaining their analogy and why the other anaologies of the time aren't appropriate. I mean these are just regular people working these ideas out over decades and decades, in turn supported by thousands and thousands of others doing the same. By reading the papers, you get both sides of the story, rather than just "oh, this theorem says this".
That being said, this book by Gregory Chaitin, and his other writings as well, relate the limits of human/mathematical knowledge to programming languages. It is very easy to read, too. And Godel's paper: well everyone is intimidated by it, but 3/4 of the paper is just him writing 45 different programs, and then using those 45 to write the 46th, which is his famous theorem.
You're assuming that the contestants were knowingly doing it for the money and not just for the hell of it, or the challenge. Besides the top placers will probably get a job out of it, if they don't have one already.
I wish topcoder would let people write in Common Lisp or something more fun than Java, C++, and fucking C#. Since any problem solved is just going to have to be rewritten anyway when it is implemented in the real world (or on google.com), you'd think they'd allow people more freedom than OO styles. I mean, Lisp can do OO, too!
I haven't been able to figure this out either. However the Google Puzzle Championship seems somehow related to the Code Jam, and the Puzzle Championship has posted their problems. Its probally speculation whether the problems sets are in any way related.
Nevermind. I'm in idiot. Mod me down.
Can anyone tell me if this Jess is related in any way to the JESS language that runs Warcraft 3? ;) They are not exactly the same but I'm trying to figure out if, say, the WC3 version is in any way based off Jess.
Well evolution isn't species based, its individual-and-"gene" based. There are alot of species that tend to kill themselves quite a bit, but it's all part of the game. As long as after the nuclear holocaust 1 guy is left with about 100 women, it really won't matter to that guy (nor evolution) that the rest of the species butchered itself!
Nevermind if he had bothered to include all of the human species, as in those of us who lived some 10,000-100,000 years ago! Saying that humanity didn't exist or do much before 800BC is like saying computers didn't exist until the G5 came along. This book is pure bullshit.
You might all be interested to know that "communist" is actually slang for "communalist". Now, tell me, who the hell could possibly be against anything "communal"? I mean, would you go down and bomb villages in South America knowing their only crime was that they wanted to be 'communal', or would it be easier since they're "communist"?
Well, the Toronto Stock Exchange has a habit of hosting some of the more risky and illegeal companies of the world that are looking for funding--in fact if you're the government looking for, say, some mercenaries to hire, or a mercenary company looking to develop the mine you just nabbed, Toronto is the place to be. A great deal of backwater business flows through that exchange that has nothing to do with Canada.
I'm not sure how individuals working as head hunters compare to companies that place contractors/with option to hire, but I'm fresh out of school and looking for programming work--some friends suggested I look into "Tek Systems" (http://www.teksystems.com) and "Rober Half" (http://www.roberthalftechnology.com)...has anyone here used these companies before? Are they good? Any advice? I hear that alot of programmers get their start through contracting work with the option to hire, is this true?
The same thing, and then some, is also available in CLisp. Nevermind being easier to code, easier to read, easier to debug, easier to port, and, while we're talking about byte code compilers, Clisp has some damn fast compilers out there, equivilent to C and C++ speeds. ;)
There have already been numerous security and maintenance problems with the David-Besse Nuclear Plant...the plant has come much closer to melting down before this stupid event. See http://www.ohiocitizen.org/campaigns/electric/nucf ront.html.
But, this power has often been used for less noble purposes. It has also been used for political and economic purposes to spy on individuals who are not involved in international terrorism or plots against a national government. Some suspected uses are:
I don't think that Sterling is right when he argues that Total Information Awareness will bring on some new rash of "KGB style coups." Some of you might remember that the NSA has been evesdropping on Congressmen for years (even on the staunchly pro-Defense-Military congressmen) and the CIA regularly keeps full files on all Congressmen with all of their dirty little secrets. The reason that there hasn't been a series of coups yet (well, ignore the 9-11 coup for now...) is that its far easier to blackmail people into having them do _your_ dirty work than to rat them out entirely. The only thing TIA will do is increase the leverage of the executive branch over the rest of society.
wyrd. BBS's rocked. I still remember LoR and Exitilus (so many holes!) and Falcon's Eye----there was nothing like the BBS. So safe and local and down-to-earth.
SBC can sick my fucking dick those fucking pricks. Their lawyers are all going to burn in hell lol.
President Bush today declared a new front in the War on Terrorism, citing CIA documents claiming the existence of Chineese terror training camps based on the moon.
In retaliation, the Administration ordered the first ever bombing of the moon.
The Chinese, startled at the discovery of U.S. missiles in space, subsequently nuked the West Coast."
I think it would be impossible to fully prepare for something like this without a portable internet connection (i.e. laptop and satellite connection).
The basic idea is that the probability of highly compressible data resulting from a algorithmic process is much higher than one that would result from a random process.
Funny, I never mentioned Iraq...
Yep. And innovation doesn't matter much when the DoD is spending $387 billion a year...thats a whole lot of spin-offs!
And, of course, Silicon Valley was built off of DoD subsidies, nevermind IBM.
The Japanese may not be the best example of fiscal responsibility: their economy has been in the crapper for a decade, due in no small part to their banks' refusal to default the bad loans they made in the 80's. A lot of their prosperity was manufactured by banks giving out loans to people who had no business getting them. Sound familiar? You're forgetting (or not mentioning) the fact that Japan has jack for a military. Some countries (ahem ahem) in dire financial straits, have found that its cheaper to just invade other countries to relieve economic stress...Japan in the 90s could have gone south and checked out the oil around the Spratley Islands, and then used this to lessen their recession. However, China was already there and China's military is much larger than Japans. Hence the continued recession.
Besides, everyone knows the problem is undecidable anyway :)