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User: bowronch

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  1. Re:Why exact/y would anyone want to do that? on PSP Summer Homebrew Coding Contest · · Score: 1

    1 - I can buy a PSP and have a lot of commercial games to buy in addition to writing my own programs for it.

    2 - There's a lot of PSP owners out there who can play your game, not just other homebrew authors. I don't think nearly as many non-homebrew authors are going to be buying the gp2x.

  2. Re:Question for biologists... on Worst Jobs in Science: Year Three · · Score: 5, Informative

    From http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/1/l_0 11_01.html

    Evolution of the Eye:

    When evolution skeptics want to attack Darwin's theory, they often point to the human eye. How could something so complex, they argue, have developed through random mutations and natural selection, even over millions of years?

    If evolution occurs through gradations, the critics say, how could it have created the separate parts of the eye -- the lens, the retina, the pupil, and so forth -- since none of these structures by themselves would make vision possible? In other words, what good is five percent of an eye?

    Darwin acknowledged from the start that the eye would be a difficult case for his new theory to explain. Difficult, but not impossible. Scientists have come up with scenarios through which the first eye-like structure, a light-sensitive pigmented spot on the skin, could have gone through changes and complexities to form the human eye, with its many parts and astounding abilities.

    Through natural selection, different types of eyes have emerged in evolutionary history -- and the human eye isn't even the best one, from some standpoints. Because blood vessels run across the surface of the retina instead of beneath it, it's easy for the vessels to proliferate or leak and impair vision. So, the evolution theorists say, the anti-evolution argument that life was created by an "intelligent designer" doesn't hold water: If God or some other omnipotent force was responsible for the human eye, it was something of a botched design.

    Bilogists use the range of less complex light sensitive structures that exist in living species today to hypothesize the various evolutionary stages eyes may have gone through.

    Here's how some scientists think some eyes may have evolved: The simple light-sensitive spot on the skin of some ancestral creature gave it some tiny survival advantage, perhaps allowing it to evade a predator. Random changes then created a depression in the light-sensitive patch, a deepening pit that made "vision" a little sharper. At the same time, the pit's opening gradually narrowed, so light entered through a small aperture, like a pinhole camera.

    Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight. Eventually, the light-sensitive spot evolved into a retina, the layer of cells and pigment at the back of the human eye. Over time a lens formed at the front of the eye. It could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue containing increasing amounts of liquid that gave it the convex curvature of the human eye.

    In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species. The existence of this range of less complex light-sensitive structures supports scientists' hypotheses about how complex eyes like ours could evolve. The first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago. And, according to one scientist's calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch.

  3. Re:Life Disk on Condensing Your Life on to a USB Flash Drive? · · Score: 1

    Don't forget a towel.

  4. Re:That's great... on PSP 2.0 Update Finally Released · · Score: 2, Informative

    actually it works with 1.0 and 1.5.

  5. Re:Firmware upgrade on PSP Function Additions In the Works · · Score: 2, Informative

    Other good places to look for PSP homebrew/emulators:

    http://emuholic.emuboards.com/
    http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/
    http://www.pspupdates.com/

    A lot of the psp homebrew developers hang out at:
    http://forums.ps2dev.org/index.php?c=5

    and for some self promotion, check out pspChess:
    http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=1760

  6. Re:So when are we going to get a Linux port? on PSP UMD Format Cracked · · Score: 2, Informative

    Apparently someone has been able to run a hello world app off a memory stick, but it requires downgrading to a 1.0 firmware which removes an encryption requirement for running code off the memory stick... link and discussion are here

  7. Re:You -Really- Don't Get This? on Can an Open Source Project Be Acquired? · · Score: 1

    [b]You'd be hard pressed to get all the developers of something significant like GCC or Linux to agree to such an action, and refusal from anyone with a significant contribution pretty much stops the acquisition.[/b]

    I'm not positive about this, but I believe that when you submit a patch to gcc in order to get it accepted you must sign over the copyright to the FSF so that they actually own the IP...

  8. Re:So, has any Slashdot reader checked the results on RSA-576 Factorization Officially Announced · · Score: 1
    with a little help from lisp I did this... It checked out... /. is adding some white space to the numbers that isnt reall there...
    i i i i i i i ooooo o ooooooo ooooo ooooo
    I I I I I I I 8 8 8 8 8 o 8 8
    I \ `+' / I 8 8 8 8 8 8
    \ `-+-' / 8 8 8 ooooo 8oooo
    `-__|__-' 8 8 8 8 8
    | 8 o 8 8 o 8 8
    ------+------ ooooo 8oooooo ooo8ooo ooooo 8

    Copyright (c) Bruno Haible, Michael Stoll 1992, 1993
    Copyright (c) Bruno Haible, Marcus Daniels 1994-1997
    Copyright (c) Bruno Haible, Pierpaolo Bernardi, Sam Steingold 1998
    Copyright (c) Bruno Haible, Sam Steingold 1999-2003

    [1]> (defun test-rsa ()
    (let ((number
    ;; copied from page
    1881988129206079638386972394616504398071635633794 17382700763356422988859715234665485319060606504743 04531738801130339671619969232120573403187955065699 6221305168759307650257059)
    (prod
    (* 39807508642406493739712550055038649119906436234252 6708406385189575946388957261768583317
    47277214610743530253622307197304822463291469530209 7116459852171130520711256363590397527)))
    (if (= number prod)
    (format t "Equal")
    (format t "Not Equal"))))

    TEST-RSA
    [2]> (test-rsa)
    Equal
    NIL
    [3]>
  9. Re:If you don't get paid for something on IT Workers Not Eligible for Overtime in New Rules · · Score: 1

    from reading this article its not that clear, but I am under the assumption that its not that you are not getting paid for working the overtime, you just aren't getting paid the 1.5x normal rate that you would get for working over 40 hours a week...

    There seems to be some confusion on this...

  10. Re:The "Biggest" on Giant Sub-Woofer · · Score: 1

    I'm thinking that if you go to that trouble for acousitc quality, you don't use a lossy compression format...

    Also, what are you planning on listening to the mp3's on?

  11. winboard/xboard on Apple's Chess 2.0 Source Code Available · · Score: 1

    If you are interested in this, you might be also interested in Xboard/Winboard by Tim Mann... They are open source interfaces to text based chess engines... This allows you to write a chess program using text interface and use winboard for your GUI... lets you focus on the fun stuff like bitboards and hashtables...

    the link for xboard/winboard can be found here

    And as a shameless plug you might be interestd in checking out my chess engine (BCE) that can be run under xboard that can be found here

  12. Re:Unresolved bugs. on Why You Should Choose MS Office Over OO.org · · Score: 1

    "de facto standard"

    You might want to know the meaning of phrases you nit pick...

    From dictionary.com

    de facto
    adj.
    1. Actual: de facto segregation.
    2. Exercising power or serving a function without being legally or officially established: a de facto government; a de facto nuclear storage facility.

    The entire premise of a de facto standard is that it is NOT legally or offically standard, it just becomes the standard...

  13. Re:Pre Alpha Release? OT on Prothon - A New Prototype-based Language · · Score: 1

    Lane, would you mind if I took out Beth?

    Your sig line cracked me up when I remembered where I knew it from...

    sorry, I just to say that...

  14. Re:outlook 2k3 on Next Generation Mail Clients Reviewed · · Score: 1

    Does outlook 2003 have an option to do bottom replies? I wouldnt mind using it but I cannot deal with the brain dead top replies it forces...

  15. Re:And for US citizens not residents of LA? on House Bill to Make File-Sharing an Automatic Felony · · Score: 1

    When searching for some background information on trial by combat, i came across This interesting article.

    From the article:

    Court refuses trial by combat
    By David Sapsted
    (Filed: 16/12/2002)

    A court has rejected a 60-year-old man's attempt to invoke the ancient right to trial by combat, rather than pay a £25 fine for a minor motoring offence.

  16. Re:What about Red Bull on Gaming Fuel: 4-way Shootout · · Score: 1

    I think it's really a matter of 9:51 AM being a little late to still be drinking... i usually give up and go to sleep around 8:00 AM...

    I've always thought that red bull and vodka taste like smarties... yummy...

  17. Re:National Rifle Association on Seeking the Right Environmental Cause to Support? · · Score: 2, Insightful
    It seems that the Fourth Amendment speaks to issues of privacy
    The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized


    Not absolute privacy, but the privacy against unreasonable searches and seizures nonetheless
  18. Joseph Campbell on Long-Term Career Plans for Programmers? · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I think Joseph Campbell said it well...
    Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome will be.
    That and
    Follow your bliss.
  19. Re:Depends on [Why] Smart People Believe Weird Things · · Score: 1

    Doesn't Des Cartes prove "I think therefore I am" in the meditations?

    IIRC He says that even if he was being thwarted by an "evil genius" deceiving him on every possible experience, that at the very least there must be something that is being deceived... And everytime he thinks there must be something doing the thinking... The thinking thing is him and so that as long as he is thinking he exists as a thinking being...

  20. Re:Shit on Longer Bar Codes Coming in 2005 · · Score: 1

    You'll have to get one of those penis enlargement they always send email about and get an extra digit tattooed...

  21. Re:Far Side on Linuxworld Fun · · Score: 1
    Never ascribe to malice that which could merely be incompetence


    From the jargon file:

    Hanlon's Razor prov.

    A corollary of Finagle's Law, similar to Occam's Razor, that reads "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." The derivation of the Hanlon eponym is not definitely known, but a very similar remark ("You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.") appears in "Logic of Empire", a classic 1941 SF story by Robert A. Heinlein, who calls it the `devil theory' of sociology. Heinlein's popularity in the hacker culture makes plausible the supposition that `Hanlon' is derived from `Heinlein' by phonetic corruption. A similar epigram has been attributed to William James, but Heinlein more probably got the idea from Alfred Korzybski and other practitioners of General Semantics. Quoted here because it seems to be a particular favorite of hackers, often showing up in sig blocks, fortune cookie files and the login banners of BBS systems and commercial networks. This probably reflects the hacker's daily experience of environments created by well-intentioned but short-sighted people. Compare Sturgeon's Law, Ninety-Ninety Rule.

  22. Re:Going further... on Does Your Debugger Sing to You? · · Score: 1

    Assembly == Techno

    I think BASIC should sound like "Pocket Calculator" by Kraftwerk... Which is basically, I guess, like music from a $5 casio keyboard...

  23. Re:Happiness on Does Your Debugger Sing to You? · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    (dotimes (i 9)
    (jump gun mother-superior))

  24. Re:No real danger... on Sony Proudly Rolls Out Spyware/Restrictions System · · Score: 2, Insightful
    If they want to deploy this to "static" platforms like Playstation, then it's going to be one iteration of code. Crack it once, job done, they can hardly force people to upgrade the bios in their consoles etc so there's no real reliable way of auto-deploying a patch.


    What if they put it into game discs? Seems like they could auto-deploy it without you ever having any idea about it...

  25. Re:Deep, man. on Men vs. Machines · · Score: 1

    What's with the "Deep" designation? Are the programmers for the chess projects all aging hippies?


    Think Douglas Adams...

    Deep Thought was a computer chess machine built at Carnegie-Mellon University in the 1980's. It was a predecessor to Deep Blue, the chess machine that defeated Garry Kasparov in a match. Neither machine exists at this time.

    BTW anybody interested in computer chess might be interested in my program BACE which should have the ability to learn to play better as it goes along... unfortunately the learning process is not working right now, but it does play a decent game of chess (rated ~1900 blitz on FICS)