I hate these "naked eye" events. I love astronomy,
but I'm frankly embarrassed about having to stand
out in my yard buck naked just to look at a comet
or meteor shower. My neighbours all think I'm
a freak.
Could somebody please explain to me why
I have to be naked to view these things?
It's especially nasty now in January.
I usually avoid wireless mice like the plague (even the vaunted MX900 and MX1000) due to mouse lag attributed to the use of RF communication.
Right; this mouse uses Subspace Communication
(tm Star Trek). Not this old-fashioned RF stuff.
Whatever the BF does, it has essentially eliminated wireless mouse lag (I am guessing it has to do with the use of RFID
Ah. "RFID". Cue the "Princess Bride" I-do-not-think-that-word-means-what-you-think-it means quotes.
and the fact that the receiver is never further than a few inches from the mouse).
Let's see, RF at 3E8 m/s will cover one inch
in about... 85 picoseconds. Yes, I'm sure
RF propagation has always been the cause
of your lag. Definitely when your mouse
is on the moon and the computer is on earth.
Oh wait, I forgot. This device doesn't use
RF. It uses... RFID.
The root is not allowed to end in a zero, because
that would have the result end in thirteen
zeroes which makes it, um, so much simpler I guess.
That leaves you with a mere... 7,193,306 possible
roots to memorize.
I don't know how they do it, but I am familiar
with modulo-10 math "tricks". For example,
did you know that if you add up the individial
digits in any number and the result is divisible
by 3, then the original number is divisible
by 3? For example "621". 6+2+1=9, and so
621 is divisible by 3 (Try it: 621/3=207).
13th root has similar magic: the 13th root
of any number will have the same last digit
as the number you are trying to take the root of.
For example, the 13th root of
2235879388560037062539773567 is 127.
Notice that they both end in 7. An integer
and its 13th power always ends in the same
digit. Try it.
The point is, that little trick itself reduces
the problem space by a factor of 10 right there.
So I'm assuming they've studied and learned
further tricks like these. Ask them for
the 11th root of the same number and they'll
probably come up completely blank.
The Zaurus 6000 could have become big. The user interface needed only minor tweaking. If only it had had GSM built it (smartphone like) + some good voip software + a call plan where email and instant messenging would have been free...
It does have decent VOIP software. I have
ZiaxPhone installed on my 6000SL and it works
fine.
The mike and speaker are on the backside of
the unit, so I do look a little odd
standing there talking to the backside of
my PDA, but it works great.
Re:Which is really surprising to me
on
Decompiling Java
·
· Score: 1
I'm astounded that Sun javac doesn't do the
obvious optimization. I wrote a test program
with and without the "== true" part, and here's
the diffs (the test prog just println's the result). What the hell?
My personal pet peeve is "for all intensive purposes".
Well, that's a whole new level of confusion,
because it's an entire phrase that's being
misunderstood rather than just a single word.
The phrase (as you know) is "for all intents
and purposes", which makes perfect sense,
while "intensive purposes" is utter nonsense.
That said, I think "for all intents and purposes" is
not a phrase that should be used at all.
It's a cliche. Empty calories in a good
sentence.
Personally I think I'd be happy if people
just stopped confusing "lose" and "loose".
I can do it in my car
on
Saving Huygens
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I've got ham radio gear in my car.
I had a friend key up a dead carrier on 446 MHz
while standing at the side of the road,
put my car radio in SSB mode (which makes the
dead carrier sound like a plain sine wave)
and then I drove past him at around 100 km/hr.
At that speed, it causes a total shift
of around 80 Hz, which is easily heard by ear.
Quite cool.
Mutual cooperation (which TfT's get when they
meet) lead to each player getting 0.5 years,
for an average of 0.5 years.
The "sacrificial" algorithm described in this
article means the defector gets 0 years, but
the cooperator gets 10 years, for an average
of a whopping 5 years. That stinks; the only
way to get worse is to do constant
mutual defection (for an average of 6
years).
Most PD games I've seen in the past have involved
"community", or team, scores. In those
situations, TfT has always done well because
they get the best possible average score when
they meet each other, and the only way to
beat TfT is to do chronic defection, which
leads to a pretty pyrrhic victory, because
your only advantage over the TfT was the one
single defection you did at the start.
If I had to live in a PD society,
I'd pick a TfT one in a flash!
I don't know how to say this without coming
off sounding unpleasant, but being old enough
to have seen the moon landing live, I can
assure you that nothing since has even come
close in emotional impact.
People popping suborbital launches is
actually a bit of a downer to me.
We did that sort of stuff in 1959.
We were supposed to have moon bases by now,
and manned missions to mars, and of course
a huge von Braun style space station
(as depicted in 2001: A Space Odyssey,
back in 1968 fercryinoutloud).
When I was teaching calculus I made an exam where every answer was 2. I was sort of amused watching the students faces as they at first started doubting themselves, then slowly got the "joke."
Now, if you were a real bastard, you would
have made the last question
come out to 1 instead.
Then sit back and watch as all the students
frantically try to figure their "mistake"
on that question.
Oh fine, but what happens if somebody
strolls by and accidentally knocks the
whole PBR into a vat of heavy water (D2O),
which somebody earlier clumsily spilled a
subcritical mass of plutonium into, and the
vat also happens to be an excellent neutron
reflector, and then a fifty-ton lid then
suddenly falls over the whole thing???
It's a disaster waiting to happen!
I've got you there, admit it.
I always assumed that at some point, somebody
spilled their tea on their crotch, got a nasty
burn, and sued the bejeesus out of
McDonalds^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H the replicator manufacturing
company.
And so, after that, all replicators were
programmed to only serve warm tea, unless
the user specifically asked for "hot".
Once mail gets past the ipcheck/spamhaus, it
gets filed to a spam folder which I check occasionally, so there's no problem there.
Most false positives have come from weird
mail clients that don't put me on to "To:"
line. It's typically some friend doing
a "mass mailing" to all his buddies.
I don't recommend the ^To:" filter if
you're worried about false positives.
The ipcheck/spamhaus stuff, however, blocks
delivery completely which is indeed a different
problem. But here it gets interesting.
Spammers try to deliver once, and never retry
if rejected. By contrast, real mailservers
retry if the ipcheck fails (because
the reject code is marked as "temporary").
I have a logscanner that
tells me if some site has been retrying for
24 hours, and if it looks legit I just add
it to the trusted site list.
spamhaus rejected stuff bounces back to the
sender. I've has one case of a legit business
being bounced this way, but they didn't mind
because it revealed to them that they DID
in fact have a zombied machine on their
intranet that was spamming! Once they fixed
that, they quickly got delisted and all was
well again.
But in short, since I don't run a business,
false positives don't worry me much. If I
were to run a business, I think I'd stick
to just the spamhaus and bogus-html checks.
Spamhaus rbl is very reliable and effective.
reject_unknown_client is on. This means
that a connecting client MUST have a reverse-dns
lookup for its IP, and the resulting name
MUST resolve back into that IP. This alone
blocks most spammers before their client
can even begin to send a message.
I use xbl.spamhaus.org. This is a wonderful
thing. This blocks not only any box known
to spam, but also any box found to be
infested by some virus, ie zombies.
Once again, this stops them dead before
the message even starts.
In the unlikely event that they get past
those hurdles, I have a homebrewed filter
that watches for bogus HTML tags, since
they like to intersperse bogus empty
tags in the middle of words in order to
foil content-based filters. This simple
filter actually blocks 90% of anything
that made it that far.
Spamassassin. The few brave soldiers of
spam that got this far rarely pass this.
I leave this filter near the end because
it's rather CPU intensive...
Finally, a simple procmail rule: If my name
isn't in the "To:" or "Cc:" line, file it
as spam.
I haven't seen a spam message in, uh,
maybe a year or two?
Slashdot Mirror
j2me: VSZ 11952, RSS 3404, in 4 threads.
python 2.3.3: VSZ 2676, RSS 2284, in 1 thread.
That gives python only a little bit bigger footprint than bash. Not too shabby, considering what it can do.
Let me guess; the modification is to glue a fibre-optic cable onto it.
Could somebody please explain to me why I have to be naked to view these things? It's especially nasty now in January.
WHERE'S MY GODDAMNED FLYING CAR???
Right; this mouse uses Subspace Communication (tm Star Trek). Not this old-fashioned RF stuff.
Ah. "RFID". Cue the "Princess Bride" I-do-not-think-that-word-means-what-you-think-it means quotes.
Let's see, RF at 3E8 m/s will cover one inch in about... 85 picoseconds. Yes, I'm sure RF propagation has always been the cause of your lag. Definitely when your mouse is on the moon and the computer is on earth.
Oh wait, I forgot. This device doesn't use RF. It uses... RFID.
I give up.
That leaves you with a mere... 7,193,306 possible roots to memorize.
I don't know how they do it, but I am familiar with modulo-10 math "tricks". For example, did you know that if you add up the individial digits in any number and the result is divisible by 3, then the original number is divisible by 3? For example "621". 6+2+1=9, and so 621 is divisible by 3 (Try it: 621/3=207).
13th root has similar magic: the 13th root of any number will have the same last digit as the number you are trying to take the root of. For example, the 13th root of 2235879388560037062539773567 is 127. Notice that they both end in 7. An integer and its 13th power always ends in the same digit. Try it.
The point is, that little trick itself reduces the problem space by a factor of 10 right there. So I'm assuming they've studied and learned further tricks like these. Ask them for the 11th root of the same number and they'll probably come up completely blank.
Gosh. Do the photons come with little tags that say "organically grown"?
It does have decent VOIP software. I have ZiaxPhone installed on my 6000SL and it works fine.
The mike and speaker are on the backside of the unit, so I do look a little odd standing there talking to the backside of my PDA, but it works great.
Beta MSN search for "Why Linux sucks": 1,112,635 hits
On the other hand, if I do the same search on Google, I get more hits for Linux sucking than Microsoft.
I think I'll go into a corner and wring my hands and babble to myself for a while...
Then you too go to Phobos and marvel how loomingly big Mars is above you. Or bekow you, depending on how you feel.
A truly awesome Universe simulator.
Get over chess fetish already. It's not what humans are best for.
But can it play Doom3?
Well, that's a whole new level of confusion, because it's an entire phrase that's being misunderstood rather than just a single word. The phrase (as you know) is "for all intents and purposes", which makes perfect sense, while "intensive purposes" is utter nonsense.
That said, I think "for all intents and purposes" is not a phrase that should be used at all. It's a cliche. Empty calories in a good sentence.
Personally I think I'd be happy if people just stopped confusing "lose" and "loose".
I had a friend key up a dead carrier on 446 MHz while standing at the side of the road, put my car radio in SSB mode (which makes the dead carrier sound like a plain sine wave) and then I drove past him at around 100 km/hr.
At that speed, it causes a total shift of around 80 Hz, which is easily heard by ear. Quite cool.
The "sacrificial" algorithm described in this article means the defector gets 0 years, but the cooperator gets 10 years, for an average of a whopping 5 years. That stinks; the only way to get worse is to do constant mutual defection (for an average of 6 years).
Most PD games I've seen in the past have involved "community", or team, scores. In those situations, TfT has always done well because they get the best possible average score when they meet each other, and the only way to beat TfT is to do chronic defection, which leads to a pretty pyrrhic victory, because your only advantage over the TfT was the one single defection you did at the start.
If I had to live in a PD society, I'd pick a TfT one in a flash!
Or, as is the case for me and most others, "if I have failed to see further, it is because giants are standing on my shoulders".
People popping suborbital launches is actually a bit of a downer to me. We did that sort of stuff in 1959. We were supposed to have moon bases by now, and manned missions to mars, and of course a huge von Braun style space station (as depicted in 2001: A Space Odyssey, back in 1968 fercryinoutloud).
Hmm. Can I report it as a bug that Firefox is not behaving like beta software should?
You're going to have a lot to answer for the first time she stumbles into a porn site or gets some viagra spam.
Now, if you were a real bastard, you would have made the last question come out to 1 instead.
Then sit back and watch as all the students frantically try to figure their "mistake" on that question.
It's a disaster waiting to happen! I've got you there, admit it.
And so, after that, all replicators were programmed to only serve warm tea, unless the user specifically asked for "hot".
Most false positives have come from weird mail clients that don't put me on to "To:" line. It's typically some friend doing a "mass mailing" to all his buddies. I don't recommend the ^To:" filter if you're worried about false positives.
The ipcheck/spamhaus stuff, however, blocks delivery completely which is indeed a different problem. But here it gets interesting.
Spammers try to deliver once, and never retry if rejected. By contrast, real mailservers retry if the ipcheck fails (because the reject code is marked as "temporary"). I have a logscanner that tells me if some site has been retrying for 24 hours, and if it looks legit I just add it to the trusted site list.
spamhaus rejected stuff bounces back to the sender. I've has one case of a legit business being bounced this way, but they didn't mind because it revealed to them that they DID in fact have a zombied machine on their intranet that was spamming! Once they fixed that, they quickly got delisted and all was well again.
But in short, since I don't run a business, false positives don't worry me much. If I were to run a business, I think I'd stick to just the spamhaus and bogus-html checks. Spamhaus rbl is very reliable and effective.
- reject_unknown_client is on. This means
that a connecting client MUST have a reverse-dns
lookup for its IP, and the resulting name
MUST resolve back into that IP. This alone
blocks most spammers before their client
can even begin to send a message.
- I use xbl.spamhaus.org. This is a wonderful
thing. This blocks not only any box known
to spam, but also any box found to be
infested by some virus, ie zombies.
Once again, this stops them dead before
the message even starts.
- In the unlikely event that they get past
those hurdles, I have a homebrewed filter
that watches for bogus HTML tags, since
they like to intersperse bogus empty
tags in the middle of words in order to
foil content-based filters. This simple
filter actually blocks 90% of anything
that made it that far.
- Spamassassin. The few brave soldiers of
spam that got this far rarely pass this.
I leave this filter near the end because
it's rather CPU intensive...
-
Finally, a simple procmail rule: If my name
isn't in the "To:" or "Cc:" line, file it
as spam.
I haven't seen a spam message in, uh, maybe a year or two?