Well, if you restrict yourself to three-letter acronyms, there are only 17576 of those. I wouldn't be surprised if they've been used up a long time ago already... but then, you have 460000 four-letter acronyms and 11.9 million five-letter acronyms! There should be something available...
I don't think grandma and expert functionality have to be mutually exclusive. What's wrong with presenting the five "most important" options in a wizard-like environment, but including an "experts" button that displays the other 75?
(1.) U.S. Laws only reach as far as U.S. borders. Where does 95% of spam come from?
It's been said here on Slashdot before, that although the email messages originate outside the U.S., the people responsible for the spam are sitting right here in the U.S. (with exceptions, like the Nigerian scam mails, of corse). So you could still go after them.
Dude, you have a serious attitude problem. I was merely expressing my wish for such a feature; how is that whining? And if I focussed on learning the standards, it would be of little avail since I'm not a web developer, nor do I give web development classes.
Maybe putting people down on Slashdot is your form of anger management. Try meditation instead. Too bad you won't be reading this since you posted as an AC.
What I'd much rather see is a "next page in a series" tag in HTML. Imagine reading a multipage article. At the end of the page, instead of finding that stupid link (which often seems to be where you least expect it), you could just press ALT-RIGHT (or right-click/next, or mouse:right-down, or whatever) to go to the next page. Maybe I could even configure my browser to automatically preload that next page.
HTML and all its extensions should focus on providing the document's contents and structure. The method of navigation is entirely up to the browser application, and should not be decided by the web designer.
However, I'm a little concerned with the effectiveness of this type of weapon from a ratings point of view. How exactly do you keep the audience entertained without any explosions or visible signs of destruction?
Aw, that would be no problem. You can use E-bombs for critical locations, in or near cities, and then set off some nice big blasting firework bombs just for the media, in some remote desert area, where nobody gets hurt. Just tell the media the enemy is hiding out at the other end of the desert. With a military-controlled media coverage, everything is possible!
Come on, how hard is it to come up with a list of cool gadgets that we would like to see lying under OUR christmas tree? That's the easy part! The hard part is to find all these NON-GEEK gifts for our non-geek friends or significant others...
I, for one, have to torment myself every year in order to come up with something remotely thoughtful...
What is the Slashdot crowd planning to get for the non-geek people in their lives?
Write to your congressman immediately, demanding that these phones become outlawed worldwide! They might be used by terrorists to plan attacks against Freedom and Civilization! Or, worse than that, they may be used for illegal file trading! A Good Citizen (TM) has nothing to hide, and will have no need for Evil (TM) tools like this.
Actually this particular example is not really about algorithms, since all that Fritz did as this stage in the game is choose between different lines in his opening encyclopedia.
Strictly speaking, of course, this is also done by an algorithm (since everything a computer does, is), but that's beside the point. It is the human developers who decide which opening lines Fritz favors. So obviously the developers must have overlooked this line, or they simply hadn't enough time to go through Fritz's entire opening encyclopedia.
By looking at the games of this match, and the previous one where Kramnik played against a computer program (which one? was it Deep Fritz?), it seems to me that most of the computer's wins are due to terrible human blunders (see this match's second game, or emotional imbalance (as when Kramnik, after defeating the computer soundly in an early match, suddenly shifted to a very aggressive style, and lost badly). Hence you could attribute most of the computer wins to "defective hardware" on the human side.
Maybe, in order to make things more fair, the computer should be plugged into the Ontario power grid without a backup power supply;-)
Reminds me of the "far side" cartoon where you see the sad remainders of chickens, frogs, and other small animals splattered against an observation window in a research facility. Overhead is a sign saying "particle accelerator", and one member of the cleaning crew says to another: "Ever since they allowed biologists in here, our job has become twice as hard!"
The concept of a "particle" in subatomic physics is actually not as clear-cut as our everyday intuition about the meaning of the word. Pretty much every manifestation of energy that is reasonably stable can be called a "particle".
As an example, if you consider the bound state formed by a single electron and a proton (also called a Hydrogen atom), the situation is clear-cut: The rest energy of the electron and proton are so much larger than their binding energy, that you call the electron and proton "elementary particles" of the system, and attribute the difference in energy to them being in a "bound state". But what if the binding energy is of the same order of magnitude as the rest energies of the involved particles (as can happen, afaik, in subnuclear physics)? Suddenly it's not clear which of the three "objects" involved you should call "elementary particles", and which you should call the "bound state" between these.
I notice I'm rambling here. Well, the upshot is, that sometimes it's really hard to decide what to call an elementary particle, and what not. But as a rule of thumb, if you notice something that contains energy, and splits up into a bunch of known particles some time later, it can be only one of two things: either it's a bound state of known elementary particles, or if that's not possible, because a proper combination cannot be found, it must be a new elementary particle.
Of course, before throwing the (rather successful, albeit incomplete) standard model overboard, the proper course of action is to wait for their results to be confirmed by at least one other group.
No, Fritz does not have a learning algorithm. The developers will surely analyze today's game and tweak Fritz accordingly, though.
However, Kasparov won't be able to reproduce this exact game in the next game for two reasons:
1) He has the black pieces in the next game, and
2) Even if he would be playing white again, Fritz chooses opening moves and variants from his database with a random element. So it's very unlikely that two of the games will turn out exactly the same. In one of the previous matches, the Fritz developers were even allowed to change Fritz's opening preferences between the matches. So you can be sure they'll eliminate this line from Fritz's choices.
Err, the low efficiency of a combustion engine cannot really be helped by a flywheel.
I was actually more thinking along the lines of storing the excess energy generated when braking in the flywheel, instead of dissipating it into heat. How much good that would do, if technically feasible, I have no idea.
wouldn't all gasoline engines be better off with really big flywheels?
Or an electric motor, acting as a generator, as in a hybrid car. With the flywheel you might run into trouble: install it with its axis oriented horizontally, and it acts as a gyroscope, preventing the car from making turns. Install it with the axis oriented vertically, and your car would swerve every time you hit the brakes. Maybe two flywheels aligned vertically would do the job... but they'd make the car much heavier, of course.
I know this is meant as a joke, but how much do we really benefit from all those fancy-shmancy extensions like Flash or JavaScript? I would argue that mostly advertisers benefit. For the rest of us (at least for those still sitting behind a dial-up connection), they just result in slower browsing. Of all the more advanced "web technologies", the majority of web sites I visit maybe use frames, but that's about it.
The internet was originally designed to distribute information quickly and efficiently. Now more than 90% of the bandwidth is probably taken up by fancy eye-candy and ads, both of which I could live without.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if you restrict yourself to three-letter acronyms, there are only 17576 of those. I wouldn't be surprised if they've been used up a long time ago already... but then, you have 460000 four-letter acronyms and 11.9 million five-letter acronyms! There should be something available...
I don't think grandma and expert functionality have to be mutually exclusive. What's wrong with presenting the five "most important" options in a wizard-like environment, but including an "experts" button that displays the other 75?
Certainly not inspiring, but I don't see why it should be any worse than today's world of N'Sync and comparable test tube bands.
Maybe the NY Times, like most non-scientists, refers only to the visible part of the EM spectrum as "light".
It's been said here on Slashdot before, that although the email messages originate outside the U.S., the people responsible for the spam are sitting right here in the U.S. (with exceptions, like the Nigerian scam mails, of corse). So you could still go after them.
Maybe putting people down on Slashdot is your form of anger management. Try meditation instead. Too bad you won't be reading this since you posted as an AC.
HTML and all its extensions should focus on providing the document's contents and structure. The method of navigation is entirely up to the browser application, and should not be decided by the web designer.
Yes, most people use a Discman with a Marvin Gaye CD as their Soul Rhythm generator.
Aw, that would be no problem. You can use E-bombs for critical locations, in or near cities, and then set off some nice big blasting firework bombs just for the media, in some remote desert area, where nobody gets hurt. Just tell the media the enemy is hiding out at the other end of the desert. With a military-controlled media coverage, everything is possible!
Let's try it again: The correct link is gnuwin.epfl.ch
..or GNUWin II: Has Windows versions of many programs the Linux community can't live without anymore: gcc, Gimp, OpenOffice, and many more!
I'd like to recycle my old notebook's LCD into a secondary monitor for my desktop. Does anyone have any ideas how one could do that?
I, for one, have to torment myself every year in order to come up with something remotely thoughtful...
What is the Slashdot crowd planning to get for the non-geek people in their lives?
Oh yes, I'm being sarcastic...
Strictly speaking, of course, this is also done by an algorithm (since everything a computer does, is), but that's beside the point. It is the human developers who decide which opening lines Fritz favors. So obviously the developers must have overlooked this line, or they simply hadn't enough time to go through Fritz's entire opening encyclopedia.
Maybe, in order to make things more fair, the computer should be plugged into the Ontario power grid without a backup power supply ;-)
Reminds me of the "far side" cartoon where you see the sad remainders of chickens, frogs, and other small animals splattered against an observation window in a research facility. Overhead is a sign saying "particle accelerator", and one member of the cleaning crew says to another: "Ever since they allowed biologists in here, our job has become twice as hard!"
As an example, if you consider the bound state formed by a single electron and a proton (also called a Hydrogen atom), the situation is clear-cut: The rest energy of the electron and proton are so much larger than their binding energy, that you call the electron and proton "elementary particles" of the system, and attribute the difference in energy to them being in a "bound state". But what if the binding energy is of the same order of magnitude as the rest energies of the involved particles (as can happen, afaik, in subnuclear physics)? Suddenly it's not clear which of the three "objects" involved you should call "elementary particles", and which you should call the "bound state" between these.
I notice I'm rambling here. Well, the upshot is, that sometimes it's really hard to decide what to call an elementary particle, and what not. But as a rule of thumb, if you notice something that contains energy, and splits up into a bunch of known particles some time later, it can be only one of two things: either it's a bound state of known elementary particles, or if that's not possible, because a proper combination cannot be found, it must be a new elementary particle.
Of course, before throwing the (rather successful, albeit incomplete) standard model overboard, the proper course of action is to wait for their results to be confirmed by at least one other group.
The brilliant part was that Kasparov got Fritz into such a cramped position. The rest was just routine for him, I'm sure.
However, Kasparov won't be able to reproduce this exact game in the next game for two reasons:
1) He has the black pieces in the next game, and
2) Even if he would be playing white again, Fritz chooses opening moves and variants from his database with a random element. So it's very unlikely that two of the games will turn out exactly the same. In one of the previous matches, the Fritz developers were even allowed to change Fritz's opening preferences between the matches. So you can be sure they'll eliminate this line from Fritz's choices.
YES! If you live in a totalitarian state, that is...
Umm... and exactly how would the virus turn carbon dioxide into hydrogen? A virus that triggers nuclear fission - cool!
I was actually more thinking along the lines of storing the excess energy generated when braking in the flywheel, instead of dissipating it into heat. How much good that would do, if technically feasible, I have no idea.
Or an electric motor, acting as a generator, as in a hybrid car. With the flywheel you might run into trouble: install it with its axis oriented horizontally, and it acts as a gyroscope, preventing the car from making turns. Install it with the axis oriented vertically, and your car would swerve every time you hit the brakes. Maybe two flywheels aligned vertically would do the job... but they'd make the car much heavier, of course.
I know this is meant as a joke, but how much do we really benefit from all those fancy-shmancy extensions like Flash or JavaScript? I would argue that mostly advertisers benefit. For the rest of us (at least for those still sitting behind a dial-up connection), they just result in slower browsing. Of all the more advanced "web technologies", the majority of web sites I visit maybe use frames, but that's about it.
The internet was originally designed to distribute information quickly and efficiently. Now more than 90% of the bandwidth is probably taken up by fancy eye-candy and ads, both of which I could live without.