Nice idea, but far from true, I'm afraid. An infinite non-repeating number need not include every possible combination. For example, here's an infinite non-repeating decimal number that doesn't include any combination with the digits '2' to '9':
Good music, like good art of any form, and even life itself, usually tends to lie on the boundary between order and disorder. Between stuff that's too structured/predictable, and too unstructured/unpredictable.
The same note repeated at the same interval for a long period is too repetitive to be interesting or moving to anyone (minimalists excepted...); completely random notes played for random times using random sounds is too formless and unstructured to be interesting to most people (free jazz enthusiasts excepted...)
Most music, of any genre or style, has patterns at work, and is only partially predictable. The best music tends to involve patterns at many different levels, from the sounds used to individual note patterns and relationships to large-scale structure. We may not consciously be aware of these patterns, but they're usually there, and make the music richer and more satisfying as a result. (Bach, for example, was a master at using complex patterns in music, both from music theory and also numerology.)
This ought to link in rather neatly with the branch of maths called Chaos Theory, which studies the boundary between order and disorder, and looks at the way patterns can emerge. But apart from a few fractal music generators, which TMK haven't produced any promising music yet, I don't know of any work done in this area. Have I missed anything good?
If every phone was listening to the same sound, then it might be possible. But that's far from the case. Next time you go to a concert, try closing your eyes and moving around. The sound changes! The heads and bodies in front of you shape the sound; reflections off walls and other surfaces cause subtle phase cancellations that vary in frequency depending exactly where you are; and of course your relative distance from the various sound sources also changes, so some will arrive earlier or later. All of this means that even if every phone were a perfect mic, you'd still end up with a total mishmash of sound, multiple echoes, filtering and cancelling effects, and of course masses of crowd noise, some of which would reinforce. Add the quality and delay problems of mobiles phones, and in practice I can't see it being possible. Sorry. It's a good idea, and we need fresh good ideas. Just not that one:)
Indeed. Most of it was interesting and imaginitive, but the numerical stuff is a) clearly desperate, and b) ignores the relevance of synthesiser names. Trinity (made by Korg), Prophecy (Korg), Matrix (Oberheim), Prophet (Sequential), Virus (Access), Mirage (Ensoniq), Proteus (EMU), and SH-101 and TB-303 (Roland) are all relevant to the film -- a few of those are probably coincidental, but I'd be prepared to bet that the authors at least had at least a couple in mind.
Also c) it ignores the relevance of Orwell's Room 101, and the simple Neo=One=Room 101 and Trinity=3=Room 303 connections.
Have Apple ever pulled an update like this before? Any speculation on why this one fell below their usual high standards?
I hit the Ethernet problem myself (and most frustrating it was, too), but replacing the driver (as described elsewhere) worked a treat, and I've had no other issues with 10.2.8 at all. No obvious benefits, either, though...
10.2.8 includes a new version of the internal Ethernet driver; many folks have found it stops their Ethernet from working!
Discussed further here. Respect to Andrew McPherson for coming up with a workaround: make a backup of/System/Library/Extensions/AppleGMACEthernet.kextbefore upgrading, and restore it afterwards. If you've already upgraded, follow the link for more info.
...it didn't 'briefly have a one-in-a-million chance of crashing into our planet'. It hasn't changed trajectory in the last few days; we're not in any more or less danger, and its chance of crashing into our planet remains the same as it ever was.
All that's changed is our assessment or understanding of that chance.
(This message has been brought to you by the Society for Probability And Chance Education. Thank you.)
Of course, it depends on where you are. I'm in the UK, and when I faxed my MP last year (from the FaxYourMP web site), about the proposed amendment to the RIP bill, he responded with a letter (on 'House of Commons' headed paper) almost immediately, and another a month later when the amendment was withdrawn. (I don't like the man personally, and I don't agree with some of his politics, but as a constituency MP he does a good job.)
And it depends on the content as well as the medium. My fax was original, business-like, and carefully-argued, though partly based on stuff available online. I suspect that originality, literacy, clarity, conciseness, and focus all count well, just as obvious copying, rambling, pointless emotion, length, and lack of focus will make a communication less likely to be read or acted upon. You need to state carefully but briefly the problem, the cause, what you're asking your representative to do, and why; if you do that politely, it'd be an inconsiderate person who didn't at least reply, whatever the medium.
I suspect that the reason online petitions often don't seem to count is less that they're online, and more that they're petitions; without a direct, personal request for action, any communication will have less weight.
Mono on the other hand reproduces MS technology that MS apperantly doesn't want to be open despite it's (marketing) efforts to standardize a subset of the Framework.
Indeed. Does anyone else get the impression that M$ is getting other folk to code up, for free, their bait in a massive bait-and-switch operation?
A secure OS is of course very important. (For large values of 'secure'.) But what proportion of current problems are caused by the OS, and what proportion by apps?
I don't use a PC, so I've largely ignored Blaster and the other recent viruses/worms/&c, but aren't at least some of them down to Outlook and other insecure apps? If every OS suddenly became 100% secure (if such a thing existed) tomorrow, how many problems would remain?
The Mac OS X column view is a good balance, I think. Individual folders get shown as a nice traditional list, but it's quick and easy to navigate through the file system, and there's enough spatial positioning and dynamism to give you a 'feel' for where things are.
And although from what I've seen no 3D file managers are as usable as traditional 2D ones - yet - that doesn't mean that further research won't yield something startlingly intuitive. Maybe the problem is that they're not radical enough?
Some more of Dali's 'lost' work that I'd like to see is the dream sequence in Hitchcock's film Spellbound. A short sequence made it into the final film, but it was originally planned to be 20 minutes long; some of the filmed-but-cut material sounds fascinating.
Exactly. The state of Windows &c is a symptom of the problem, not the cause. The problem is M$'s business practices.
If they behaved properly, then their products would sink or swim on their own merits. It's their buying or bankrupting the opposition, their unfairly using one monopoly to try to gain others, their giving away software in risky areas like third-world countries and educational institutions, their nobbling the competition (DR-DOS, Java, &c) that's led to the current situation; without those, we wouldn't be having to force them to open up APIs or stick to standards, they'd be doing it out of good business practice anyway -- if they were still around.
I believe Safari is based around the same rendering engine as Konqueror. If the site works in that, then isn't there a good chance that it'll behave as expected in Safari too?
Personally, if a site works well without change in IE, Mozilla, and Konqueror, then I'd take that as pretty good evidence that it's using standards and should work anywhere. But then I'm not a web designer by trade...
Then try one of the sites which offer non-DRMed files. Fictionwise is one I've had good experiences with, though I'm sure there are others. And that's new, copyrighted material.
Why does this one come up every single flippin' time that ebooks get mentioned?
Yes, I'm sure that for you, in your current circumstances and with current equipment, they're a no-go. But must you assume that it applies equally to everyone, in all circumstances, and for the foreseeable future too?
I'm a case in point: over the last couple of years, I've read far more onscreen than off. (And that's not due to having nothing else to read.) Why? I find it more convenient, for a number of reasons:
It's there. I carry my pocket computer (a Psion 5mx) around with me anyway; I don't have to remember to pick up my latest reading material, and make extra space for it.
Backlight. I can read in bed, or elsewhere at night, without needing a light.
Bookmarks and other conveniences. I always lose physical bookmarks; when I don't use them, it sometimes takes a while to remember where I got up to. My reader app keeps track for me.
Formatting and anglicisation. With physical books, I'm stuck with the spellings and mistakes that they're printed with; but I can edit ebooks and convert them to British English spelling, etc.
Cut'n'paste. I don't have to retype quotes &c if I want to refer to them.
Font size. Depending on the conditions, I can adjust the font size &c to match. For dead-tree books, the only `zoom mode' you have is to move your head closer to the object...
Library size. I currently carry nearly a thousand books and stories with me, so I'm never stuck for anything. I really wouldn't want to try that with dead-tree editions.
Cheapness. I read some stuff that's out of copyright and available for free (e.g. via Gutenberg). I also have many files purchased from Fictionwise, which is substantially cheaper than buying in dead-tree form. (I'm not admitting to having files of more dubious origin, too...)
Searching. If I have vague memories of having read something, or want to check back, I can do a straight text search.
Add on to that that I find reading from my Psion's screen perfectly comfortable; more so than reading from a monitor (though I have read some stories there too). Enough that while I'm reading a story, I get engrossed in the story and am scarcely aware of the medium - which, after all, is what matters.
(BTW, I've never read anything on my Psion in the bath, but you might be interested to know that Douglas Adams actually wrote in the bath! Incidentally, on an older Psion model.)
Now, I'm specifically not saying that these advantages apply to everyone. I'm sure they don't. But that's exactly the point: neither do your disadvantages. Isn't it enough that some people like ebooks?
Europeans are very badly informed about what happens in the United States... For example, yesterday's Associated Press article about reaction to Bush's speech was significantly different [in German] / [in English] in the version sent to Germany than that distributed in the US.
Erm... They're different, so you automatically assume that the US version is closer to the truth? What sort of nationalism does that betray?
Otherwise, the internet *will* become just the web and AIM for everyone if they like it or not.
What, with many people wanting to use various P2P networks? And various Instant Messaging systems? And applications and OSs that check for updates? And Usenet? And time servers? And RSS feeds? And FTP servers (accessed from web site)? Not to mention SSH, &c &c. Some of those may be power-user tools, but I suspect the first few will affect large numbers of users.
After a password cracker gets passed people and pet names, it's going to go for songs, movies and varients.
Erm, hate to carp, but if a cracker gets passed, then they're not going to go for any other password attempts, because they're in! Maybe you meant past...
Anyway, to get to the point, something I haven't seen anyone mention is the combination of factors. Long passwords aren't on their own a problem; complex non-word passwords including numbers &c usually aren't on their own a problem, especially if, as you say, you base them on phrases or other known sequences; passwords that need to be changed weekly or monthly aren't on their own a problem, either; and having many different passwords canall of these.
Who can remember umpteen different long, complex passwords?
Okay, now keep your hands up anyone who can do that even if they have to change them all every week.
I don't see any hands still up.
So, security designers, please think about your users. If you're going to require them to put in long, complex passwords, they should be secure enough without needing to be changed frequently; give your users a chance to get to know them. Conversely, if you really need frequent changes, allow your users to choose passwords that aren't that hard to remember. Otherwise, they will write them on sticky notes on their monitors, and you'll end up with worse security than before.
Yes, yes, this is off-topic... but someone needs to stand up for the poor girl, and I'm frankly amazed that it's me. Yes, her pop music panders to the lowest-common-denominator; she's effectively sold her body many times over in some of her shows and videos; she seems to have no sense of shame. And yes, her early films were dire. She sounds aggressive and hard to work with.
But in Evita she was phenomenal. She got closer to the character's mannerisms, appearance, contradictions, and above all sheer attitude than just about anyone else could, and the performance was powerful and compelling. The months of vocal training clearly paid off; her voice gained power, richness of tone, and support and control that it never had before. (You can still hear the effects in her more recent work.) If you have any evidence to support those '10 times' overdub claims, I'd be very interested to see it - I'd be surprised if any were needed at all.
As a trained singer myself, I'm not entirely ignorant about such things. I'd agree with many criticisms of her career, personality, other work, &c. But if you heard 'a little mouse' singing, then you didn't hear the same Evita I did.
Slashdot Mirror
I tend to refer to it as 'the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom'.
The same note repeated at the same interval for a long period is too repetitive to be interesting or moving to anyone (minimalists excepted...); completely random notes played for random times using random sounds is too formless and unstructured to be interesting to most people (free jazz enthusiasts excepted...)
Most music, of any genre or style, has patterns at work, and is only partially predictable. The best music tends to involve patterns at many different levels, from the sounds used to individual note patterns and relationships to large-scale structure. We may not consciously be aware of these patterns, but they're usually there, and make the music richer and more satisfying as a result. (Bach, for example, was a master at using complex patterns in music, both from music theory and also numerology.)
This ought to link in rather neatly with the branch of maths called Chaos Theory, which studies the boundary between order and disorder, and looks at the way patterns can emerge. But apart from a few fractal music generators, which TMK haven't produced any promising music yet, I don't know of any work done in this area. Have I missed anything good?
If every phone was listening to the same sound, then it might be possible. But that's far from the case. Next time you go to a concert, try closing your eyes and moving around. The sound changes! The heads and bodies in front of you shape the sound; reflections off walls and other surfaces cause subtle phase cancellations that vary in frequency depending exactly where you are; and of course your relative distance from the various sound sources also changes, so some will arrive earlier or later. All of this means that even if every phone were a perfect mic, you'd still end up with a total mishmash of sound, multiple echoes, filtering and cancelling effects, and of course masses of crowd noise, some of which would reinforce. Add the quality and delay problems of mobiles phones, and in practice I can't see it being possible. Sorry. It's a good idea, and we need fresh good ideas. Just not that one :)
Indeed. Most of it was interesting and imaginitive, but the numerical stuff is a) clearly desperate, and b) ignores the relevance of synthesiser names. Trinity (made by Korg), Prophecy (Korg), Matrix (Oberheim), Prophet (Sequential), Virus (Access), Mirage (Ensoniq), Proteus (EMU), and SH-101 and TB-303 (Roland) are all relevant to the film -- a few of those are probably coincidental, but I'd be prepared to bet that the authors at least had at least a couple in mind.
Also c) it ignores the relevance of Orwell's Room 101, and the simple Neo=One=Room 101 and Trinity=3=Room 303 connections.
I hit the Ethernet problem myself (and most frustrating it was, too), but replacing the driver (as described elsewhere) worked a treat, and I've had no other issues with 10.2.8 at all. No obvious benefits, either, though...
How do you do that?
Discussed further here. Respect to Andrew McPherson for coming up with a workaround: make a backup of /System/Library/Extensions/AppleGMACEthernet.kext before upgrading, and restore it afterwards. If you've already upgraded, follow the link for more info.
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Hanlon's Razor may well apply here.
All that's changed is our assessment or understanding of that chance.
(This message has been brought to you by the Society for Probability And Chance Education. Thank you.)And it depends on the content as well as the medium. My fax was original, business-like, and carefully-argued, though partly based on stuff available online. I suspect that originality, literacy, clarity, conciseness, and focus all count well, just as obvious copying, rambling, pointless emotion, length, and lack of focus will make a communication less likely to be read or acted upon. You need to state carefully but briefly the problem, the cause, what you're asking your representative to do, and why; if you do that politely, it'd be an inconsiderate person who didn't at least reply, whatever the medium.
I suspect that the reason online petitions often don't seem to count is less that they're online, and more that they're petitions; without a direct, personal request for action, any communication will have less weight.
Indeed. Does anyone else get the impression that M$ is getting other folk to code up, for free, their bait in a massive bait-and-switch operation?
I don't use a PC, so I've largely ignored Blaster and the other recent viruses/worms/&c, but aren't at least some of them down to Outlook and other insecure apps? If every OS suddenly became 100% secure (if such a thing existed) tomorrow, how many problems would remain?
And although from what I've seen no 3D file managers are as usable as traditional 2D ones - yet - that doesn't mean that further research won't yield something startlingly intuitive. Maybe the problem is that they're not radical enough?
Some more of Dali's 'lost' work that I'd like to see is the dream sequence in Hitchcock's film Spellbound. A short sequence made it into the final film, but it was originally planned to be 20 minutes long; some of the filmed-but-cut material sounds fascinating.
If they behaved properly, then their products would sink or swim on their own merits. It's their buying or bankrupting the opposition, their unfairly using one monopoly to try to gain others, their giving away software in risky areas like third-world countries and educational institutions, their nobbling the competition (DR-DOS, Java, &c) that's led to the current situation; without those, we wouldn't be having to force them to open up APIs or stick to standards, they'd be doing it out of good business practice anyway -- if they were still around.
Personally, if a site works well without change in IE, Mozilla, and Konqueror, then I'd take that as pretty good evidence that it's using standards and should work anywhere. But then I'm not a web designer by trade...
It should be 'fewer Alyson Hannigan nude scenes'!
Or not...
Then try one of the sites which offer non-DRMed files. Fictionwise is one I've had good experiences with, though I'm sure there are others. And that's new, copyrighted material.
Yes, I'm sure that for you, in your current circumstances and with current equipment, they're a no-go. But must you assume that it applies equally to everyone, in all circumstances, and for the foreseeable future too?
I'm a case in point: over the last couple of years, I've read far more onscreen than off. (And that's not due to having nothing else to read.) Why? I find it more convenient, for a number of reasons:
- It's there. I carry my pocket computer (a Psion 5mx) around with me anyway; I don't have to remember to pick up my latest reading material, and make extra space for it.
- Backlight. I can read in bed, or elsewhere at night, without needing a light.
- Bookmarks and other conveniences. I always lose physical bookmarks; when I don't use them, it sometimes takes a while to remember where I got up to. My reader app keeps track for me.
- Formatting and anglicisation. With physical books, I'm stuck with the spellings and mistakes that they're printed with; but I can edit ebooks and convert them to British English spelling, etc.
- Cut'n'paste. I don't have to retype quotes &c if I want to refer to them.
- Font size. Depending on the conditions, I can adjust the font size &c to match. For dead-tree books, the only `zoom mode' you have is to move your head closer to the object...
- Library size. I currently carry nearly a thousand books and stories with me, so I'm never stuck for anything. I really wouldn't want to try that with dead-tree editions.
- Cheapness. I read some stuff that's out of copyright and available for free (e.g. via Gutenberg). I also have many files purchased from Fictionwise, which is substantially cheaper than buying in dead-tree form. (I'm not admitting to having files of more dubious origin, too...)
- Searching. If I have vague memories of having read something, or want to check back, I can do a straight text search.
Add on to that that I find reading from my Psion's screen perfectly comfortable; more so than reading from a monitor (though I have read some stories there too). Enough that while I'm reading a story, I get engrossed in the story and am scarcely aware of the medium - which, after all, is what matters.(BTW, I've never read anything on my Psion in the bath, but you might be interested to know that Douglas Adams actually wrote in the bath! Incidentally, on an older Psion model.)
Now, I'm specifically not saying that these advantages apply to everyone. I'm sure they don't. But that's exactly the point: neither do your disadvantages. Isn't it enough that some people like ebooks?
Erm... They're different, so you automatically assume that the US version is closer to the truth? What sort of nationalism does that betray?
What, with many people wanting to use various P2P networks? And various Instant Messaging systems? And applications and OSs that check for updates? And Usenet? And time servers? And RSS feeds? And FTP servers (accessed from web site)? Not to mention SSH, &c &c. Some of those may be power-user tools, but I suspect the first few will affect large numbers of users.
Erm, hate to carp, but if a cracker gets passed, then they're not going to go for any other password attempts, because they're in! Maybe you meant past...
Anyway, to get to the point, something I haven't seen anyone mention is the combination of factors. Long passwords aren't on their own a problem; complex non-word passwords including numbers &c usually aren't on their own a problem, especially if, as you say, you base them on phrases or other known sequences; passwords that need to be changed weekly or monthly aren't on their own a problem, either; and having many different passwords canall of these.
Who can remember umpteen different long, complex passwords?
Okay, now keep your hands up anyone who can do that even if they have to change them all every week.
I don't see any hands still up.
So, security designers, please think about your users. If you're going to require them to put in long, complex passwords, they should be secure enough without needing to be changed frequently; give your users a chance to get to know them. Conversely, if you really need frequent changes, allow your users to choose passwords that aren't that hard to remember. Otherwise, they will write them on sticky notes on their monitors, and you'll end up with worse security than before.
But in Evita she was phenomenal. She got closer to the character's mannerisms, appearance, contradictions, and above all sheer attitude than just about anyone else could, and the performance was powerful and compelling. The months of vocal training clearly paid off; her voice gained power, richness of tone, and support and control that it never had before. (You can still hear the effects in her more recent work.) If you have any evidence to support those '10 times' overdub claims, I'd be very interested to see it - I'd be surprised if any were needed at all.
As a trained singer myself, I'm not entirely ignorant about such things. I'd agree with many criticisms of her career, personality, other work, &c. But if you heard 'a little mouse' singing, then you didn't hear the same Evita I did.