>Maybe more and more people will slowly wake up and realize that the > whole "entertainment industry" is rotting and dying... > they need to instead spend their idle time pursuing worthwhile > hobbies, projects, sports, adventures, etc...
I agree wholeheartedly. What would be best, IMHO, is if people re-learned how to entertain each other through local theatre and musical performance groups.
Similar to baseball in the US during the strike. A lot of fans actually went out and _played_ the game, instead of being stadium potatoes. People who couldn't/didn't play could still watch the local teams to get their baseball fix.
Once upon a time, there was no recording industry. To enjoy music, people played instruments and sang with and to each other. Professional musicians were more in demand, since you couldn't use a recording as a replacement for live music. If this all came back, I don't think it would be particularly tragic for anyone but the recording industry (and for them, it would be tragic in the Greek sense).
Last decade, in Washington State, hydrodemolition was used to "resurface" the Eastbound lanes of the Lake Washington Floating Bridge, a couple of miles from the Western end of Interstate 90.
Due to a chain of snafus, the "floating" bridge sunk one Thanksgiving day. Very nearly sunk the brand new Westbound floating bridge right next to it. (Part of the root cause was the storage of hydrodemolition wastewater in the flotation cells of the bridge.)
Some years later, the records of liability were sealed in a court settlement between the state and the contractor.
... a piece of paper, a bottle, a cork, and a fountain pen.
But wait, I can't use the pen 'cause I can't write cursive.
Why, why, why, did I skip out on my penmanship class? Who would have known that some day, my life would depend on being able to write with a fountain pen?
(Guess I'll just have to send a message from my laptop via WiFi to Slashdot, and pray someone gets it and comes to rescue me.)
If I bait the *AA into prosecuting me, falsely or otherwise, I'll lose lots of money and time defending myself. _Their_ lawyers are already budgeted for and paid. _My_ lawyers can drain my savings in a few days.
The litmus test for the merits of your little honeypot is whether you're willing to try this _yourself_ and face the risks of your own idea. Trolling for someone else to do it doesn't cut the mustard.
> In practice you have to decide if the odds of being affected by the > bug the patch fixes are greater than the odds of the patch screwing > up the system in some unknown way.
This is more pragmatic, but I have another option for splitting the hair:
(A) Would you rather explain that you broke the system because you installed a security patch, or
(B) Would you prefer to explain that the hackers who trashed/stole your data broke in because you didn't install the security patch.
We call this the "CNN Moment" test, as in "which makes a more sensational news moment on CNN?"
What I don't understand is, doesn't changing the bills every so often make it harder for people to recognize authentic currency?
After a few changes, there will be a diversity of $20's, for instance. It seems to me that it's much easier for people to be able to scrutinize one design than two or three different designs.
Plus, anytime a new design starts to circulate, there is a period of time when some clueless merchants aren't going to recognize the new bills as authentic.
I think that the proposition that mathematical breakthroughs are predominantly made in youth, whether true or not, relates not to the vigour of youth, but to the settling in of dogma.
I've seen this proposition about physicists in more than one lay venue. It was made clear that most breakthroughs in physics were made by minds that had the flexibility to "think outside the box." The gist of the "youth" paradigm is that the more years dedicated to a subject, the more that the thought patterns get set in their ways, precluding the intuitive leaps that change the intellectual landscape.
That being said, Wiles didn't just make some brilliant leaps. He worked damn hard on the details. It may have been more than 10% inspiration for him to prove Taniyama-Shimura (the real achievement for which Fermat was a by-product). Still, from what I've read about his accomplishment, his work was definitely more than half perspiration.
The Book is "Fermat's Enigma" by Simon Singh. I highly recommend it. Singh has a talent for writing about deeply analytical subjects. He also wrote "The Code Book" about the history of cryptography, and he's written a Nova episode or two.
I wish he'd written more books; an Amazon search turns up little else than these two.
Re:will have to be carful
on
TiVo Basic
·
· Score: 1
> Season Passes aren't very helpful *IF THE NETWORKS KEEP CANCELLING THE SHOWS YOU LIKE*
Well, Duh, when the Nielson ratings are calling people asking what they're watching, and the "Firefly" and "Tick" viewers are all out having a beer and letting their Tivo's record the series, how do you think the ratings are going to add up?
> Now, can someone tell me what practical applications > there might be of this? Or is it strictly an abstract concept?
Speaking as a layman, the practical application of these sorts of proofs is that you can use them to prove equivalent, more practical questions.
One of the references in another comment explained that this conjecture has been proved for all other dimensions, and this 3-sphere seems to be a special case, as far as proof is concerned.
If the Poincare' conjecture were proved, then the general case could be solved. After that, "simply" proving that another hard problem is equivalent to the Poincare' conjecture is enough to prove that other problem.
Now, I've heard the problem described with a lasso instead of with a rubber band. I can imagine times when I'd really like to know when my lasso is going to close around something or if it's just going to slip off;-)
As I've commented before, I'm intrigued that we have our planetary computer network hooked up to an open port on a radio-telescope. Hoping for a superior alien race to send us e-mail. What if they also have alien computer viruses?
> Listen to the radio, got to concerts, gad, get out from in front of the computer
Or, be really old-fashioned, and _Make_ music instead of buying it.
I get most of my music itch scratched by sining in a community chorus twice a week.
That and listening to the recordings I bought when I was under 30.;-)
Lies, Damn Lies, and Objectives
on
BSA IDC FUD
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
> This is the kind of thing that gives statistics a bad name.
I was discussing the value of using flaky numbers with a colleague the other day.
I made the point that people who use flaky numbers convincingly tend to get their way more often than people who fuss over accuracy.
So, whether you want to fuss over the quality of your numbers depends on your objective: 1) do you want to understand what is really happening, (eg. a scientist) , or 2) do you want to convince others to go along with you (eg. a politician).
Value judgements aside, what you ought to do depends on your objective.
Slashdot Mirror
> IP over avian carrier
You mean pidgeons copied the SCO code from AIX to Linux?
>Maybe more and more people will slowly wake up and realize that the ...
> whole "entertainment industry" is rotting and dying...
> they need to instead spend their idle time pursuing worthwhile
> hobbies, projects, sports, adventures, etc
I agree wholeheartedly. What would be best, IMHO, is if people re-learned how to entertain each other through local theatre and musical performance groups.
Similar to baseball in the US during the strike. A lot of fans actually went out and _played_ the game, instead of being stadium potatoes. People who couldn't/didn't play could still watch the local teams to get their baseball fix.
Once upon a time, there was no recording industry. To enjoy music, people played instruments and sang with and to each other. Professional musicians were more in demand, since you couldn't use a recording as a replacement for live music. If this all came back, I don't think it would be particularly tragic for anyone but the recording industry (and for them, it would be tragic in the Greek sense).
Last decade, in Washington State, hydrodemolition was used to "resurface" the Eastbound lanes of the Lake Washington Floating Bridge, a couple of miles from the Western end of Interstate 90.
Due to a chain of snafus, the "floating" bridge sunk one Thanksgiving day. Very nearly sunk the brand new Westbound floating bridge right next to it. (Part of the root cause was the storage of hydrodemolition wastewater in the flotation cells of the bridge.)
Some years later, the records of liability were sealed in a court settlement between the state and the contractor.
> Usually it takes up to 10 years to bring a plane up to production.
It took 10 years up to the first all-CAD plane.
The 2nd all-CAD plane should be shorter, now that the kinks in CAD have been worked out with the first plane.
> Back in my day, I had a bunch of OR and NOT gates and some solder.
Gates? Gates? You were lucky.
I had dry cells, flashlight bulbs, and switches. And I had to make the switches myself.
> I don't know which two states have adopted this,
> but I can guess one of them might be Washington state.
Both linked articles clearly and prominently report that the two states are Maryland and Virginia.
Are you a journalist?
... a piece of paper, a bottle, a cork, and a fountain pen.
But wait, I can't use the pen 'cause I can't write cursive.
Why, why, why, did I skip out on my penmanship class? Who would have known that some day, my life would depend on being able to write with a fountain pen?
(Guess I'll just have to send a message from my laptop via WiFi to Slashdot, and pray someone gets it and comes to rescue me.)
IANAL either, but legal defense costs money.
If I bait the *AA into prosecuting me, falsely or otherwise, I'll lose lots of money and time defending myself. _Their_ lawyers are already budgeted for and paid. _My_ lawyers can drain my savings in a few days.
The litmus test for the merits of your little honeypot is whether you're willing to try this _yourself_ and face the risks of your own idea. Trolling for someone else to do it doesn't cut the mustard.
> In practice you have to decide if the odds of being affected by the
> bug the patch fixes are greater than the odds of the patch screwing
> up the system in some unknown way.
This is more pragmatic, but I have another option for splitting the hair:
(A) Would you rather explain that you broke the system because you installed a security patch, or
(B) Would you prefer to explain that the hackers who trashed/stole your data broke in because you didn't install the security patch.
We call this the "CNN Moment" test, as in "which makes a more sensational news moment on CNN?"
Yeah, well, I punch patterns in Hollerith cards.
Youngsters, don't even ask.
Start transferring those Country Music 8-tracks to MP3s.
Got to be ready when the Martians land.
What I don't understand is, doesn't changing the bills every so often make it harder for people to recognize authentic currency?
After a few changes, there will be a diversity of $20's, for instance. It seems to me that it's much easier for people to be able to scrutinize one design than two or three different designs.
Plus, anytime a new design starts to circulate, there is a period of time when some clueless merchants aren't going to recognize the new bills as authentic.
When networks have automated virus defenses, the virii will attack the automated defenses.
Cyber-AIDS.
But did you grep for Microsoft spelled backwards?
!seineew era sremmargorp tfosorciM
I think that the proposition that mathematical breakthroughs are predominantly made in youth, whether true or not, relates not to the vigour of youth, but to the settling in of dogma.
I've seen this proposition about physicists in more than one lay venue. It was made clear that most breakthroughs in physics were made by minds that had the flexibility to "think outside the box." The gist of the "youth" paradigm is that the more years dedicated to a subject, the more that the thought patterns get set in their ways, precluding the intuitive leaps that change the intellectual landscape.
That being said, Wiles didn't just make some brilliant leaps. He worked damn hard on the details. It may have been more than 10% inspiration for him to prove Taniyama-Shimura (the real achievement for which Fermat was a by-product). Still, from what I've read about his accomplishment, his work was definitely more than half perspiration.
The Book is "Fermat's Enigma" by Simon Singh. I highly recommend it. Singh has a talent for writing about deeply analytical subjects. He also wrote "The Code Book" about the history of cryptography, and he's written a Nova episode or two.
I wish he'd written more books; an Amazon search turns up little else than these two.
> Season Passes aren't very helpful *IF THE NETWORKS KEEP CANCELLING THE SHOWS YOU LIKE*
Well, Duh, when the Nielson ratings are calling people asking what they're watching, and the "Firefly" and "Tick" viewers are all out having a beer and letting their Tivo's record the series, how do you think the ratings are going to add up?
> Do we have lower accuracy expectations for TV news?
Yes, I do expect less accuracy from TV news. TV news values getting the story out quickly. It values a good picture.
TV news values sensationalism over all other factors. Get people to watch and keep watching. That's the prime objective.
Take a major event, like 9/11. TV news will talk, talk, talk, before anyone knows any facts about what is happening.
TV news reported that Reagan was dead, and the results of the 2000 U.S. Presidential election on election night.
Just remember, you heard it here first.
> Now, can someone tell me what practical applications
;-)
> there might be of this? Or is it strictly an abstract concept?
Speaking as a layman, the practical application of these sorts of proofs is that you can use them to prove equivalent, more practical questions.
One of the references in another comment explained that this conjecture has been proved for all other dimensions, and this 3-sphere seems to be a special case, as far as proof is concerned.
If the Poincare' conjecture were proved, then the general case could be solved. After that, "simply" proving that another hard problem is equivalent to the Poincare' conjecture is enough to prove that other problem.
Now, I've heard the problem described with a lasso instead of with a rubber band. I can imagine times when I'd really like to know when my lasso is going to close around something or if it's just going to slip off
Solution:
Lock uSoft out anyway. ZoneAlarm should work nicely.
Tell them you have copyrighted information in your computer, and that it's a violation of DMCA for them to try and access it around your safeguards.
Well, you have to be a shareholder to have legal standing and take action.
The action you take might hurt your stock value.
Maybe that explains why so few are standing in line to complain.
As I've commented before, I'm intrigued that we have our planetary computer network hooked up to an open port on a radio-telescope. Hoping for a superior alien race to send us e-mail. What if they also have alien computer viruses?
Gives new meaning to the honeynet concept.
> Listen to the radio, got to concerts, gad, get out from in front of the computer
;-)
Or, be really old-fashioned, and _Make_ music instead of buying it.
I get most of my music itch scratched by sining in a community chorus twice a week.
That and listening to the recordings I bought when I was under 30.
> This is the kind of thing that gives statistics a bad name.
I was discussing the value of using flaky numbers with a colleague the other day.
I made the point that people who use flaky numbers convincingly tend to get their way more often than people who fuss over accuracy.
So, whether you want to fuss over the quality of your numbers depends on your objective:
1) do you want to understand what is really happening, (eg. a scientist) , or
2) do you want to convince others to go along with you (eg. a politician).
Value judgements aside, what you ought to do depends on your objective.
> Because if you can't trust the NSA, who can you trust?
Conversely, too:
If you _can_ trust the NSA, who _can't_ you trust?