Exactly. I think the idea is kind of a "Gospel according to XYZ". You could imagine a web site being "tagged" as trustworthy by various organisations, and it is really up to you as to which organisation (i.e. which version of "The Truth") you subscribe to.
It's in fact the subtitle that made me buy the book! I only made it halfway though, I expected a faster pace to get to the real "meat" of infinity. I might give it another chance now.
Re:BloatWare Continues....
on
Chrome Vs. IE 8
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· Score: 2, Funny
You know, the old ad-free, low-tech internet *is* still around, and it's living in the.edu domain.
Java has become more and more complex over the years. JDK 1.5 (or Java 5 or whatever they call it) and its introduction of generics and annotations was a major, and debatable, leap in complexity.
If possible, I would recommend starting with pre-1.5 Java, to get the basics right, and only then to move to 1.5 or 1.6.
With the recent introduction of classical inheritance to JavaScript (which may or may not be a good thing, that's besides the point), is this book still current though?
And there's no incentive in catching the cheaters and failing them:
- There's pressure from upper management in universities to reduce failure rates, because each student dropping out costs the university in lost tuition fees.
- The prof doesn't feel like arguing with the students and his uni rep or filling out the paperwork.
- It's become a "Law & Order" system where the onus is on the prof to provide undeniable proof of cheating. The prof is expected to conduct detective work instead of worrying about doing what he should be doing: teaching.
- In multi-section classes, the prof who ends up having a higher overall grade average and passing rate is perceived as the better teacher.
- The prof doesn't want to get angry negative biased anonymous feedback on ratemyprof.com
- then there's the parents, etc etc.
Of course if tuition fees were low or negligible, the pressure would be back on the student to perform, as the university would have nothing to lose in getting rid of the cheaters.
I'd say the opposite is true too: most times when people draw a state transition diagram, they're really drawing a flowchart.
State transition diagram are exactly that: to show the transitions between states in a system. You first need to determine what are the events that your system responds to, and then, for EACH state in the system, determine what happens in response to such events. "What happens" can be, but isn't always, a transition to another state. The benefit of such a diagram is that you make sure you didn't miss any kind of reaction of the system to any event that can occur at any state.
There is a good reason why in a tool like Rational Rose you find (or at least used to find, I haven't used that atrocity in years) the statechart diagram when you select a particular class (I mean "class" in the OO sense). You should use that diagram to determine how/when method calls on instances of that class can change its state (i.e. modify the value of one or many instance variables to the extent that its future behavior is changed). Think for example of how increasing the temperature of an object can make it change states (literally: from solid to liquid to gas) and therefore obey different mechanical laws.
But what I come across most often is diagrams that try to capture the flow of a system, with conditionals, loops etc. If you're trying to document an algorithm, don't use a state transition diagram, either use a flowchart or just write pseudo-code!
Here's the catch: most of the emotional advantages are firmly on the side of right-wing truth. Think of what feels good and it's true. America is the best country on earth, and everything we do is therefore moral. Oil production will never peak. The environment will take care of itself regardless of what we do, because it was put there for us by God. What industry lobbyists say about the climate is more correct than what most scientists say, because the scientists are communists. Human beings are special: not a type of animal that evolved along with other animals, but higher beings on a pedestal above animals.
See? Emotionally the right wing is far more satisfying.
Wow, I never thought of it that way! I always suspected that there was a different mentality to being right wing (resp. left wing), but I just couldn't put my finger on it. You nailed it.
Being left wing definitely makes one a grumpy, going against the grain, nail-on-the-chalkboard type of guy. Doesn't make you feel warm and fuzzy. Not electable.
I see where you're going with this. If such a sequence existed, you could just run it from any starting position, and stop as soon as you've solved the puzzle. It's not exactly the road-coloring problem (because, as far as I understand, the algorithm should know where to stop without checking that it's arrived at its destination), but an interesting variation nonetheless!
I guess that if a Rubik cube had had the same structure as an aperiodic graph (recall the recent Slashdot story), then such a fixed set of moves, that work no matter what your starting point is, would have existed. Obviously that's not the case here.
Thanks for the very clear explanation! Some questions for you:
- Isn't the "out-degree 2" restriction an obstruction as well? Would the proof work for more general graphs, with a different out-degree for each node, or even for different out-degrees for different nodes?
- Is the algorithm incremental? i.e. could you maintain a previous coloring and build on it as you add more nodes to the graph? I'm guessing that it would be the case if the proof is by induction on the number of nodes, right?
But this perhaps creates an interesting opportunity for programmable euthanasia or suicide. Our society may not be ready for this yet, but having a way to decide in which conditions you want to leave this world with dignity sounds good to me.
The same objections were made about AJAX (it's not new, it's just a buzzword, yadda yadda), yet things really took off once a few nice apps were written that way by Google. I think the same thing will be true when it comes to offline web apps, and not surprisingly I bet Google will be there first, with their Gears tool.
Slashdot Mirror
Forget the rocks and Canada, and focus on "oldest". ;)
Exactly. I think the idea is kind of a "Gospel according to XYZ". You could imagine a web site being "tagged" as trustworthy by various organisations, and it is really up to you as to which organisation (i.e. which version of "The Truth") you subscribe to.
It's in fact the subtitle that made me buy the book! I only made it halfway though, I expected a faster pace to get to the real "meat" of infinity. I might give it another chance now.
You know, the old ad-free, low-tech internet *is* still around, and it's living in the .edu domain.
Java has become more and more complex over the years. JDK 1.5 (or Java 5 or whatever they call it) and its introduction of generics and annotations was a major, and debatable, leap in complexity.
If possible, I would recommend starting with pre-1.5 Java, to get the basics right, and only then to move to 1.5 or 1.6.
Groovy did appear in the article. p2, parag 4.
You mean to the right?
With the recent introduction of classical inheritance to JavaScript (which may or may not be a good thing, that's besides the point), is this book still current though?
Wow, Colin Chapman, that's a blast from the past! Brings back childhood memories of watching F1 and rooting for those nice JPS-Lotus cars...
Dude, I wish there were more docs like you... Do you want some e-patients? ;)
Great, but now where's the linky to that mirror?
And there's no incentive in catching the cheaters and failing them:
- There's pressure from upper management in universities to reduce failure rates, because each student dropping out costs the university in lost tuition fees.
- The prof doesn't feel like arguing with the students and his uni rep or filling out the paperwork.
- It's become a "Law & Order" system where the onus is on the prof to provide undeniable proof of cheating. The prof is expected to conduct detective work instead of worrying about doing what he should be doing: teaching.
- In multi-section classes, the prof who ends up having a higher overall grade average and passing rate is perceived as the better teacher.
- The prof doesn't want to get angry negative biased anonymous feedback on ratemyprof.com
- then there's the parents, etc etc.
Of course if tuition fees were low or negligible, the pressure would be back on the student to perform, as the university would have nothing to lose in getting rid of the cheaters.
I'd say the opposite is true too: most times when people draw a state transition diagram, they're really drawing a flowchart.
State transition diagram are exactly that: to show the transitions between states in a system. You first need to determine what are the events that your system responds to, and then, for EACH state in the system, determine what happens in response to such events. "What happens" can be, but isn't always, a transition to another state. The benefit of such a diagram is that you make sure you didn't miss any kind of reaction of the system to any event that can occur at any state.
There is a good reason why in a tool like Rational Rose you find (or at least used to find, I haven't used that atrocity in years) the statechart diagram when you select a particular class (I mean "class" in the OO sense). You should use that diagram to determine how/when method calls on instances of that class can change its state (i.e. modify the value of one or many instance variables to the extent that its future behavior is changed). Think for example of how increasing the temperature of an object can make it change states (literally: from solid to liquid to gas) and therefore obey different mechanical laws.
But what I come across most often is diagrams that try to capture the flow of a system, with conditionals, loops etc. If you're trying to document an algorithm, don't use a state transition diagram, either use a flowchart or just write pseudo-code!
Now what would be the upper bound on solving the cube by moving the stickers around? What's the worst initial position?
Wow, I had goosebumps reading this (probably not the effect you were going for)! Can I vote for Obama's wife?
Ketchup in wine? Bleach!!!
He should have called it Parrser, named after the author, plus it has a nice pirate-y ring to it.
Here's the catch: most of the emotional advantages are firmly on the side of right-wing truth. Think of what feels good and it's true. America is the best country on earth, and everything we do is therefore moral. Oil production will never peak. The environment will take care of itself regardless of what we do, because it was put there for us by God. What industry lobbyists say about the climate is more correct than what most scientists say, because the scientists are communists. Human beings are special: not a type of animal that evolved along with other animals, but higher beings on a pedestal above animals.
See? Emotionally the right wing is far more satisfying.
Wow, I never thought of it that way! I always suspected that there was a different mentality to being right wing (resp. left wing), but I just couldn't put my finger on it. You nailed it.Being left wing definitely makes one a grumpy, going against the grain, nail-on-the-chalkboard type of guy. Doesn't make you feel warm and fuzzy. Not electable.
I see where you're going with this. If such a sequence existed, you could just run it from any starting position, and stop as soon as you've solved the puzzle. It's not exactly the road-coloring problem (because, as far as I understand, the algorithm should know where to stop without checking that it's arrived at its destination), but an interesting variation nonetheless!
I guess that if a Rubik cube had had the same structure as an aperiodic graph (recall the recent Slashdot story), then such a fixed set of moves, that work no matter what your starting point is, would have existed. Obviously that's not the case here.
Thanks for the very clear explanation! Some questions for you:
- Isn't the "out-degree 2" restriction an obstruction as well? Would the proof work for more general graphs, with a different out-degree for each node, or even for different out-degrees for different nodes?
- Is the algorithm incremental? i.e. could you maintain a previous coloring and build on it as you add more nodes to the graph? I'm guessing that it would be the case if the proof is by induction on the number of nodes, right?
But this perhaps creates an interesting opportunity for programmable euthanasia or suicide. Our society may not be ready for this yet, but having a way to decide in which conditions you want to leave this world with dignity sounds good to me.
I think you took that comment out of context. What he was actually saying was that he enjoyed it when people took his comments out of context. ;)
I would pay hard extra $$$ to use such an airline. Why do people find this offensive? It's not like he wants to ban children from planes period.
I would also pay extra $$$ for a no-kids coffee shop or restaurant.
The same objections were made about AJAX (it's not new, it's just a buzzword, yadda yadda), yet things really took off once a few nice apps were written that way by Google. I think the same thing will be true when it comes to offline web apps, and not surprisingly I bet Google will be there first, with their Gears tool.