Mandatory Stephenson Quote:
Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"
Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"
Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"
Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."
Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"
Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"
Bullhorn: "But..."
Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
Doesn't really matter since 'innocent until proven guilty' only applies to criminal cases (e.g. murder) and this is a civil case where the plantiff (BSA) was seeking monetary damages.
Seriously though. Your point is valid. In our universe, (good) psuedorandom numbers are just as random as anything else in the universe (that we consider random). The real problem is that people look for a distinction between random and pseudorandom when none exists.
Of course, the fallacy is that there is any such thing as a "truly random number." They've just found a good way to seed a psuedo random number, with a source that is really rather unpredictable. Exact voltage or ambient temperature could work as well (I'm sure someone's tried them), but I think the contention is that this is less predictable and therefore more random, than things that have been done before.
Re:New place for libertopia?
on
HavenCo In Trouble?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
At last count, I believe Indonesia had 11,000 islands, some 7000 of which are uninhabited. I remember reading recently that they just "discovered" 1000 more islands that they didn't know were part of their country. My advice -- go to south east Asia and find an undiscovered island.
Well, admins can turn off RPC on their users' laptops. The average user probably has no need for this service to be running. Of course, you never know what Microsoft is using it for. You turn off the RPC service, and suddenly 10 unrelated things stop working. Such is the fun of being a Windows Admin (and I would know).
I've been studying Arabic for awhile, and it is quite dissimilar to English, and translation to and from it is much more difficult than between english and spanish. I mean, in Spanish you can practically guess what words are since a lot of them are english cognates these days.
For example, there's a rather complex root and form system in Arabic that often gives words multiple meanings, e.g. I take the root "k t b," which always has something to do with writing, and put it in a certain form to get "maktab" which most literally means "a place where writing is done," and can mean an office, a desk, etc. Formal Arabic is probably best described as being very metaphorical. Figuring out what words mean in a simple context like the one shown is pretty easy (although their translation is actually incorrect, "kabir" only means "big" when referring to a non-human object, it means "old" when referring to a human). In other words, the meaning of a word is highly context dependent (moreso than English, I would wager), and would also require tracking whether pronouns are referring to human or non-human objects, etc.
The statistical method is neat, but would need to be complemented with some basic knowledge about the language too I would think. Being able to translate from a language like english to japanese to arabic and back to english....that would be impressive.
From the Article: Compare two simple phrases in Arabic: "rajl kabir" and "rajl tawil." If a computer knows that the first phrase means "big man," and the second means "tall man," the machine can compare the two and deduce that rajl means "man," while kabir and tawil mean "big" and "tall," respectively.
Not to be overly anal (hopefully to raise an important point), "rajl kabir" actually means "old man" not "big man." The Arabs will definitely laugh at you if you mix these up. You'd use the word "tawil" for a tall or generally large man. The word "sameen" refers to a fat or husky guy. In a different context (referring to an inanimate object), "kabir" does in fact mean big.
I wonder how good these statistical systems really are at learning the various grammical nuances of a language like Arabic. For example, in Arabic, non-human plurals behave like feminine singulars, whereas human plurals behave like plurals.
It's really incredibly cool that these machines can learn language mechanics and definitions on their own. But as previous posters have already noted, the machine still has to know the meanings of words in order to do a good translation.
For example, to translate "big box" and "big man" into Arabic, you'd actually use different words for big, since the box is inanimate, but the man is animate.
I'd have to agree. I was taking a grad level course on programming language foundations, and the prof did the famous sieve of erasthones in one line (well two lines, since you have to call the sieve function from somewhere) in Haskell:
f (h:t) = h : f [ x | x <- t, x 'mod' h/= 0] main = f [2..]
The only reason it's possible is due to Haskell's lazy evaluation, so you can have infinite recursion defining a list, and it's not really a problem, unless you try to grab every member of the infinite list and use its value.
Well, in reality this simply isn't the case. Yeah, the phone is yours, but when you hook it up to the line, pretty much anyone who wants to can call you. That's kind of the point of the telephone as it is used today.
If you want a different kind of phone (e.g. one that only rings when the call comes from your whitelisted allowed callers), then buy one or build one yourself. But don't complain when you buy a phone and a phone service that are designed to allow anyone and everyone call you, and then this is exactly what happens.
And who says you have a right not to be harassed in your own home? You certainly have the right to prevent yourself from being harassed, but you might want to just accept that people are going to try to harass you, and the government probably won't ever be able to stop it completely.
That's a bit fallacious. A fire can happen through negligence or accidentally.
We're talking about people deliberately undertaking the murder of other people, and betting on if, when, and to whom it will occur. That's slightly more morbid than insuring yourself and your belongings against the unexpected.
So here's my problem: If I invest and the government uses my "vote" that something will happen to prevent it from happening, I lose my money, because the event didn't occur.
If the event actually happens and I have predicted it, I get my phones tapped, a visit from the FBI, probable interrogation and possible imprisionment for having "terrorist ties." What exactly is the incentive for an investor to enter this market?
Quite frankly, if I'm doing an internet search, I would expect the results to be skewed more towards computer related things. I mean, if I do a search for windows, I'm gonna expect to get a lot of stuff about Microsoft Windows, and probably have to refine my search.
Additionally, I personally think this is a good thing. When I do a search for "Apple" or "Windows" on the MSN search engine, I get a bunch of crap about apple orchards and home window repairs mixed in with results about the eponymous computer-related technologies. I'd rather have the search engine try to stay on one topic.
Imagine that! Some people prefer different features in their search engines! Could there actually be a market for more than one kind of search engine?
It's actually possible to hook one up to your existing stereo. I'm not sure exactly how it's done, but I know this is how I've seen XM satellite radio receivers installed into cars. They install some equipment back behind the dash and out the front comes a 1/8th inch jack for plugging in the XM receiver, but you could plug any device in. My dad had one installed (the XM receiver) at best buy, and the equipment and labor (not counting the receiver itself, which he got for free) cost about $100. I'm sure you could do it for less yourself, but I'm also sure the method varies from car to car.
Jeez man, I didn't know Slashdot had a mission that it could fail. I thought it was just "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters." It's not a religion, it's just software.;-)
While we're on the topic, does anyone have any experience using non-Latin alphabets on the Mac under OS X? I'm particularly interested in Arabic, since I'll be taking an Arabic composition class in the fall and it would be cool to type my papers, since my handwriting sucks.
The MATLAB documentation available online is actually pretty decent. They have a getting started section as well as lots of examples that use actual numbers instead of a bunch of variables and theorems.;-)
Win2K is STILL a CURRENT platform, as it should be. MS needs to support is as a current platform. If they build a new app that needs new functionality, they should backport that functionality to W2K and any other current platform in new service pack.
Of course, those of us forced to support Windows at work deal with this issue all the time. Sure, they sort of support Win2k, just like they sort of support COM and the Win32 API. However, they make it difficult to find the documentation on their webpage. Ultimately, we switched our development over to VB.NET because it was just too hard to find documentation for VB 6.0 on MSDN anymore (we're a small shop and we can get away with that).
FWIW, there's actually a whole branch of anthropology called -- get this -- Bioanthropology, filled with people who are quite interested in things like genetics, protein folding, etc. Of course, these scientists are interested in how these things affect human culture, society and evolution, but it's not surprising to see an anthropolgist talking genetics.
John Stossel is definitely guilty of this himself. He ran a story about a kid at my high school a few years ago who posted a website calling a bunch of teachers satan-worshippers and that they should die, etc. Then, he made it seem like the school was trying to abrogate his free speech by shutting down the website and investigating him. He never mentioned that the website was discovered less than a month after Columbine happened. Instead, he just paraded all the "satan-worshipping" teachers across the screen and accused them all of censoring this poor little kid who just wanted to express himself. Total sensationalism and no factual basis.
Re:This is much worse than "offering the service"
on
MS Passport and... Visa
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Passport Prophesied?
Revelation 13:16-17 He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.
Slashdot Mirror
Mandatory Stephenson Quote: Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!" Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!" Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!" Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music." Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!" Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!" Bullhorn: "But..." Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
Doesn't really matter since 'innocent until proven guilty' only applies to criminal cases (e.g. murder) and this is a civil case where the plantiff (BSA) was seeking monetary damages.
Hey! Quit spoiling the party with actual facts!
Seriously though. Your point is valid. In our universe, (good) psuedorandom numbers are just as random as anything else in the universe (that we consider random). The real problem is that people look for a distinction between random and pseudorandom when none exists.
Of course, the fallacy is that there is any such thing as a "truly random number." They've just found a good way to seed a psuedo random number, with a source that is really rather unpredictable. Exact voltage or ambient temperature could work as well (I'm sure someone's tried them), but I think the contention is that this is less predictable and therefore more random, than things that have been done before.
At last count, I believe Indonesia had 11,000 islands, some 7000 of which are uninhabited. I remember reading recently that they just "discovered" 1000 more islands that they didn't know were part of their country. My advice -- go to south east Asia and find an undiscovered island.
Well, admins can turn off RPC on their users' laptops. The average user probably has no need for this service to be running. Of course, you never know what Microsoft is using it for. You turn off the RPC service, and suddenly 10 unrelated things stop working. Such is the fun of being a Windows Admin (and I would know).
I've been studying Arabic for awhile, and it is quite dissimilar to English, and translation to and from it is much more difficult than between english and spanish. I mean, in Spanish you can practically guess what words are since a lot of them are english cognates these days.
For example, there's a rather complex root and form system in Arabic that often gives words multiple meanings, e.g. I take the root "k t b," which always has something to do with writing, and put it in a certain form to get "maktab" which most literally means "a place where writing is done," and can mean an office, a desk, etc. Formal Arabic is probably best described as being very metaphorical. Figuring out what words mean in a simple context like the one shown is pretty easy (although their translation is actually incorrect, "kabir" only means "big" when referring to a non-human object, it means "old" when referring to a human). In other words, the meaning of a word is highly context dependent (moreso than English, I would wager), and would also require tracking whether pronouns are referring to human or non-human objects, etc.
The statistical method is neat, but would need to be complemented with some basic knowledge about the language too I would think. Being able to translate from a language like english to japanese to arabic and back to english....that would be impressive.
From the Article: Compare two simple phrases in Arabic: "rajl kabir" and "rajl tawil." If a computer knows that the first phrase means "big man," and the second means "tall man," the machine can compare the two and deduce that rajl means "man," while kabir and tawil mean "big" and "tall," respectively.
Not to be overly anal (hopefully to raise an important point), "rajl kabir" actually means "old man" not "big man." The Arabs will definitely laugh at you if you mix these up. You'd use the word "tawil" for a tall or generally large man. The word "sameen" refers to a fat or husky guy. In a different context (referring to an inanimate object), "kabir" does in fact mean big.
I wonder how good these statistical systems really are at learning the various grammical nuances of a language like Arabic. For example, in Arabic, non-human plurals behave like feminine singulars, whereas human plurals behave like plurals.
It's really incredibly cool that these machines can learn language mechanics and definitions on their own. But as previous posters have already noted, the machine still has to know the meanings of words in order to do a good translation.
For example, to translate "big box" and "big man" into Arabic, you'd actually use different words for big, since the box is inanimate, but the man is animate.
I'd have to agree. I was taking a grad level course on programming language foundations, and the prof did the famous sieve of erasthones in one line (well two lines, since you have to call the sieve function from somewhere) in Haskell:
/= 0]
f (h:t) = h : f [ x | x <- t, x 'mod' h
main = f [2..]
The only reason it's possible is due to Haskell's lazy evaluation, so you can have infinite recursion defining a list, and it's not really a problem, unless you try to grab every member of the infinite list and use its value.
Well, I was impressed. You all may be jaded.
Well, in reality this simply isn't the case. Yeah, the phone is yours, but when you hook it up to the line, pretty much anyone who wants to can call you. That's kind of the point of the telephone as it is used today.
If you want a different kind of phone (e.g. one that only rings when the call comes from your whitelisted allowed callers), then buy one or build one yourself. But don't complain when you buy a phone and a phone service that are designed to allow anyone and everyone call you, and then this is exactly what happens.
And who says you have a right not to be harassed in your own home? You certainly have the right to prevent yourself from being harassed, but you might want to just accept that people are going to try to harass you, and the government probably won't ever be able to stop it completely.
That's a bit fallacious. A fire can happen through negligence or accidentally. We're talking about people deliberately undertaking the murder of other people, and betting on if, when, and to whom it will occur. That's slightly more morbid than insuring yourself and your belongings against the unexpected.
So here's my problem: If I invest and the government uses my "vote" that something will happen to prevent it from happening, I lose my money, because the event didn't occur.
If the event actually happens and I have predicted it, I get my phones tapped, a visit from the FBI, probable interrogation and possible imprisionment for having "terrorist ties." What exactly is the incentive for an investor to enter this market?
Additionally, I personally think this is a good thing. When I do a search for "Apple" or "Windows" on the MSN search engine, I get a bunch of crap about apple orchards and home window repairs mixed in with results about the eponymous computer-related technologies. I'd rather have the search engine try to stay on one topic.
Imagine that! Some people prefer different features in their search engines! Could there actually be a market for more than one kind of search engine?
It's actually possible to hook one up to your existing stereo. I'm not sure exactly how it's done, but I know this is how I've seen XM satellite radio receivers installed into cars. They install some equipment back behind the dash and out the front comes a 1/8th inch jack for plugging in the XM receiver, but you could plug any device in. My dad had one installed (the XM receiver) at best buy, and the equipment and labor (not counting the receiver itself, which he got for free) cost about $100. I'm sure you could do it for less yourself, but I'm also sure the method varies from car to car.
Jeez man, I didn't know Slashdot had a mission that it could fail. I thought it was just "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters." It's not a religion, it's just software. ;-)
While we're on the topic, does anyone have any experience using non-Latin alphabets on the Mac under OS X? I'm particularly interested in Arabic, since I'll be taking an Arabic composition class in the fall and it would be cool to type my papers, since my handwriting sucks.
In other words, despite Dubya's warning, Iraqis could very well vote en masse for an Islamic party. That is their right.
;-)
Hey, the Algerians tried this, but the French said their election wasn't valid.
Actually, apparently they have a really nice cafeteria that cooks gourmet food every day for lunch.
Google Food
The MATLAB documentation available online is actually pretty decent. They have a getting started section as well as lots of examples that use actual numbers instead of a bunch of variables and theorems. ;-)
Come on man, "I wish there were one fewer grammar Nazi" The only subjunctive mood remaining in the English language.
Win2K is STILL a CURRENT platform, as it should be. MS needs to support is as a current platform. If they build a new app that needs new functionality, they should backport that functionality to W2K and any other current platform in new service pack.
Of course, those of us forced to support Windows at work deal with this issue all the time. Sure, they sort of support Win2k, just like they sort of support COM and the Win32 API. However, they make it difficult to find the documentation on their webpage. Ultimately, we switched our development over to VB.NET because it was just too hard to find documentation for VB 6.0 on MSDN anymore (we're a small shop and we can get away with that).
FWIW, there's actually a whole branch of anthropology called -- get this -- Bioanthropology, filled with people who are quite interested in things like genetics, protein folding, etc. Of course, these scientists are interested in how these things affect human culture, society and evolution, but it's not surprising to see an anthropolgist talking genetics.
I only had a TI99/4A at the time. Munch Man, Alpiner, and Parsec were my favorinte games.
Hells yeah! I had this insane game called microsurgeon where you like went around killing germs inside a sickening 16-color human body.
Oh yeah, and Hunt the Wumpus was cool too.
John Stossel is definitely guilty of this himself. He ran a story about a kid at my high school a few years ago who posted a website calling a bunch of teachers satan-worshippers and that they should die, etc. Then, he made it seem like the school was trying to abrogate his free speech by shutting down the website and investigating him. He never mentioned that the website was discovered less than a month after Columbine happened. Instead, he just paraded all the "satan-worshipping" teachers across the screen and accused them all of censoring this poor little kid who just wanted to express himself. Total sensationalism and no factual basis.
Passport Prophesied?
Revelation 13:16-17
He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.