From the article: "On IRC, you can't own your nickname and you can't own a channel -- once the last person leaves a room, anyone can take it over. "
Bullshit. That's not a feature of _IRC_, that's a particular feature of the particular irc net he's using. Many smaller networks have nameservs, so that you can own your nickname, and it's also perfectly possible to have registered channel management on an IRC network too.
His criticisms of Usenet and the '>' disease are equally bogus. It's _idiots_ who don't know how to trim quotes, and idiots can make any system annoying. The higher quality newsgroups tend to slap good posting style into newbs fairly swiftly, and you therefore don't read the same thing repeatedly.
If he believes his system is inherantly superior, then perhaps we shoudl all run over, and act like annoying newbs on his fora, and he'd soon see that his setup is just as flawed as any other, if not more-so.
Don't use the non-word "seques" if you don't know what word you should be using. You're trying to show off, but showing off your ignorance. If you stick to bread-and-butter words, then everyone's happy.
The correct word is "segues". From the Italian, and ultimately from latin, where the root word did have a 'q' (same root as 'sequence' etc., and if you really want to trace it back, you can go all the way to pIE without too much of a leap of faith.)
Sure, they can survive 2000 years entombed under a volcanic slick, but what next:
Warm temperatures
Dry humidity
Ultraviolet light I sure hope they know what they're doing, or they'll be left with a pile of lightly stained flakes if they're not careful.
"they had already decided not to commercialize the stuff"
They/had/ already commercialised it, with the Star (or 8010). OK, it wasn't a commercial success, but it was still in the marketplace in 1981 (Mac was 1984).
But you're right, the Mac/Xerox story has become a false UL now.
When GEC Plessey Telecom (GPT) opened up local offices in France, the telephone operators had a set standard company greeting to say, obviously. Unfortunately, this greeting included the three letters "GPT", which while not funny to an English speaker, is hilarious to a suitable humoured Francophone. Basically it's pronounced the same way as "J'ai pete", or "I have farted".
Quite soon they were instructed instead to use the full company name in the greeting rather than the abbrieviated form!
If I have to be on-topic then I'll add that MS look as if they will blow themselves up with their own hot air. I rememeber the last time this story reached a crescendo some were saying "it's in MS's interest to jut drop it, or they might even _lose their trademark_". (As some, many in fact, have said that they had no right to it in the first place).
Joe Public won't notice any difference in the world after the proof finally comes through.
I'm a mathematician, and _I_ won't notice any difference.
Lots of conjectures and conditional theorems will suddenly become theorems. E.g. if ERH (more general than just RH) is true, then Miller's Theorem that every number than has no witness to compositeness below 2.(log(n))^2 must be prime becomes a theorem that no longer has to begin with the postulate "assuming ERH".
Various Goldbach-Conjecture-related theories will change their status too. It'll probably be the day in mathematics that the most theorems become proved, as so many depend on RH.
But what will change in the real world? Very little. RSA isn't affected, nor DH or ElGamal. Elliptic curves won't behave any differently, nor will finite fields. The only number-theory that you or I encounter in day-to-day life will remain unchanged.
It can't change a hard science (physics/chemistry etc) because hard sciences don't use theorems in the same way the mathematicians do. Mathematicians are effectively just carrying out cold symbolic algebraic manipulations. Physicists etc are building theories that can be tested such that a falsity in the theory could be demonstrated by a negative result. A different world from formal logical proof.
Sorry to piss on the fire, but the only important thing about RH's proof is that lots of conjectures or conditional theorems become theorems. Mathematicians the world over will be maturbating themselves into a frenzy at the thought, but noone else will.
"If, after all this time, the article hasn't been disproved, then it can be accepted as valid."
Absolute bollocks. It will be only accepted as valid when it accepted as valid by the editors of a relevant peer reviewed journal, where the reviewers are experts in the field.
Any old fuckwit can post nonsense to ArXiv. That doesn't mean a year later it suddenly becomes valid or accepted.
What peer-reviewed journal do you claim this has been submitted to? I can't see any reference to anything apart from ArXiv, which (a) isn't a journal and (b) isn't peer reviewed.
Your worries are well founded. Mathematicians have seen it, and have dismissed it as being very sloppily, and _non-mathematically_ written. Noone I know (mathematicians, that is) have bothered to read beyond the point where they throw their hands up in the air and cry "this is nothing but sloppy handwaving".
For example, in the _very first_ equation, he introduces an "operator", and conveniently forgets to mention what space this operator is supposed toact on. A Banach space? A Hilbert Space? We should not have to _guess_ what algebraic structure they're using.
Look at what Shor himself has said about Quantum Factoring, butt-wipe. If I think it'll never work, and Shor thinks it will never work, and Shor invented the fucking algorithm then personally I think it's a pretty good bet that I'm in the right, and you're wrong.
And before anyone claims that I was hearing the back-light, I wasn't. The backlight is a positive _roar_ compared to the LCDs. On the Psion the backlight could be turned on an off at will, and the redraw sounds were audible when the backlight was off.
LCD actually change physical state, i.e. there is a mechanical change. Enough of those at the same time, and there will be some sound. A little like piezo-electric shriekers, but much smaller, and with much smaller movement, and only a single pulse of movement rather than repeated oscillation.
My Psion 5 used to sing a merry song to me all the time as things changed on screen. Almost everything LCD makes these noises in some quantity. I do have very sensitive ears though, so perhaps not everyone hears them.
A third of the way down (Jan 23 in fact) http://www.bangedup.com/archives/ Is a link titled "Any idiot can rap" and it leads to http://www.bangedup.com/archives/MicroRBHitWiz ard. jpg
I'm a magnanimous fellow - I agree with you on this point. I said "system" rather than "operating system" for a reason. i.e. the whole box. Everything between the mouse and the network card is included in that.
(I'm not being silly with th mouse - imagine one that maliciously claimed mouse movements and clicks in order to simulate a human's actions. 10000 pels up, 10000 pels right, 20 pels down, 20 pels right, right-click, 40 pels down, right-click - who knows what I've just invoked, but it could be bad.)
It's the apps that claim to be doing what the authors think the human will want to happen that are the problem. Blaming the underlying OS is pointless if the mail client can do anything autonimously that the user might want to do interactively.
I certainly blame outlook more than I blame the NT kernel, for example, for the state of affairs virus-wise in the world today.
"a bunch of researchers have spent 60 million dollars trying to teach it common sense."
Link says: "The military, which has invested $25 million in Cyc"
Now if you knew the absolute bollocks the military has spent money on, you'd ignore that figure entirely. The military has paid Ingo Swann (or was it P&T?) much more than that for bullshit remote-viewing "research" which has so far proclaimed great success, but been unalbe to reproduce anything under independent scrutiny. Go read James Randi and Martin Gardener, as they've written a fair bit on the absolute nonsense the military has spent its money on.
The conditions aren't right. The competitors, and their bots should be the judges of whether they're talking to a bot or human. From what I understand, the people who are being fooled are the kind of people who'd argue with an answering machine.
Slashdot Mirror
D'ya think he was a top-poster or something, perhaps?
YAW.
s/nameservs/nickservs/
late, sorry...
YAW.
From the article:
"On IRC, you can't own your nickname and you can't own a channel -- once the last person leaves a room, anyone can take it over. "
Bullshit. That's not a feature of _IRC_, that's a particular feature of the particular irc net he's using. Many smaller networks have nameservs, so that you can own your nickname, and it's also perfectly possible to have registered channel management on an IRC network too.
His criticisms of Usenet and the '>' disease are equally bogus. It's _idiots_ who don't know how to trim quotes, and idiots can make any system annoying. The higher quality newsgroups tend to slap good posting style into newbs fairly swiftly, and you therefore don't read the same thing repeatedly.
If he believes his system is inherantly superior, then perhaps we shoudl all run over, and act like annoying newbs on his fora, and he'd soon see that his setup is just as flawed as any other, if not more-so.
YAW.
Don't use the non-word "seques" if you don't know what word you should be using. You're trying to show off, but showing off your ignorance. If you stick to bread-and-butter words, then everyone's happy.
The correct word is "segues". From the Italian, and ultimately from latin, where the root word did have a 'q' (same root as 'sequence' etc., and if you really want to trace it back, you can go all the way to pIE without too much of a leap of faith.)
YAW.
Sure, they can survive 2000 years entombed under a volcanic slick, but what next:
Warm temperatures
Dry humidity
Ultraviolet light
I sure hope they know what they're doing, or they'll be left with a pile of lightly stained flakes if they're not careful.
YAW.
"they had already decided not to commercialize the stuff"
/had/ already commercialised it, with the Star (or 8010). OK, it wasn't a commercial success, but it was still in the marketplace in 1981 (Mac was 1984).
They
But you're right, the Mac/Xerox story has become a false UL now.
When GEC Plessey Telecom (GPT) opened up local offices in France, the telephone operators had a set standard company greeting to say, obviously. Unfortunately, this greeting included the three letters "GPT", which while not funny to an English speaker, is hilarious to a suitable humoured Francophone. Basically it's pronounced the same way as "J'ai pete", or "I have farted".
Quite soon they were instructed instead to use the full company name in the greeting rather than the abbrieviated form!
If I have to be on-topic then I'll add that MS look as if they will blow themselves up with their own hot air. I rememeber the last time this story reached a crescendo some were saying "it's in MS's interest to jut drop it, or they might even _lose their trademark_". (As some, many in fact, have said that they had no right to it in the first place).
As you were.
YAW.
Joe Public won't notice any difference in the world after the proof finally comes through.
I'm a mathematician, and _I_ won't notice any difference.
Lots of conjectures and conditional theorems will suddenly become theorems. E.g. if ERH (more general than just RH) is true, then Miller's Theorem that every number than has no witness to compositeness below 2.(log(n))^2 must be prime becomes a theorem that no longer has to begin with the postulate "assuming ERH".
Various Goldbach-Conjecture-related theories will change their status too. It'll probably be the day in mathematics that the most theorems become proved, as so many depend on RH.
But what will change in the real world?
Very little. RSA isn't affected, nor DH or ElGamal. Elliptic curves won't behave any differently, nor will finite fields.
The only number-theory that you or I encounter in day-to-day life will remain unchanged.
It can't change a hard science (physics/chemistry etc) because hard sciences don't use theorems in the same way the mathematicians do. Mathematicians are effectively just carrying out cold symbolic algebraic manipulations. Physicists etc are building theories that can be tested such that a falsity in the theory could be demonstrated by a negative result. A different world from formal logical proof.
Sorry to piss on the fire, but the only important thing about RH's proof is that lots of conjectures or conditional theorems become theorems. Mathematicians the world over will be maturbating themselves into a frenzy at the thought, but noone else will.
YAW.
"If, after all this time, the article hasn't been disproved, then it can be accepted as valid."
Absolute bollocks. It will be only accepted as valid when it accepted as valid by the editors of a relevant peer reviewed journal, where the reviewers are experts in the field.
Any old fuckwit can post nonsense to ArXiv. That doesn't mean a year later it suddenly becomes valid or accepted.
What peer-reviewed journal do you claim this has been submitted to? I can't see any reference to anything apart from ArXiv, which (a) isn't a journal and (b) isn't peer reviewed.
YAW.
Your worries are well founded. Mathematicians have seen it, and have dismissed it as being very sloppily, and _non-mathematically_ written. Noone I know (mathematicians, that is) have bothered to read beyond the point where they throw their hands up in the air and cry "this is nothing but sloppy handwaving".
For example, in the _very first_ equation, he introduces an "operator", and conveniently forgets to mention what space this operator is supposed toact on. A Banach space? A Hilbert Space? We should not have to _guess_ what algebraic structure they're using.
YAW.
Absolute Bollocks.
Search for "Absolute Bollocks" on this page for an explanation why, I can't be arsed to explain it again.
YAW.
Wrong again - I am interacting, but you're just an anonymous shitwipe.
YAW.
Yes it's a joke. It's on you.
YAW.
You're funny.[*]
I'm in the fucking field.
Look at what Shor himself has said about Quantum Factoring, butt-wipe. If I think it'll never work, and Shor thinks it will never work, and Shor invented the fucking algorithm then personally I think it's a pretty good bet that I'm in the right, and you're wrong.
(google groups on sci.physics for refs)
YAW.
[* funny is a sad pathetic ignorant kind of way]
And before anyone claims that I was hearing the back-light, I wasn't. The backlight is a positive _roar_ compared to the LCDs. On the Psion the backlight could be turned on an off at will, and the redraw sounds were audible when the backlight was off.
YAW.
Yeah, sorry, my directions are crap.
The magic words are all there, but you need to use the right combination in the right place.
The story that mentions Baltimore is the story that calls it "Xerox polygraphy", for example.
Google groups was the intended search - group alt.folklore.urban (that's what a.f.u was supposed to mean).
Sorry,
YAW.
LCD actually change physical state, i.e. there is a mechanical change. Enough of those at the same time, and there will be some sound. A little like piezo-electric shriekers, but much smaller, and with much smaller movement, and only a single pulse of movement rather than repeated oscillation.
My Psion 5 used to sing a merry song to me all the time as things changed on screen. Almost everything LCD makes these noises in some quantity. I do have very sensitive ears though, so perhaps not everyone hears them.
YAW.
"These devices will offer enormously enhanced computing power"
Promises, promises. They've been saying that since at least the 80s. This is vaguely reminiscent of the AI (Turing Test) story a few days ago.
s/AI/QC/g
Sure, they can factor the number 15 (or so they claim), but I know a counting horse who can do the same.
YAW.
A third of the way down (Jan 23 in fact) http://www.bangedup.com/archives/z ard. jpg
Is a link titled "Any idiot can rap"
and it leads to
http://www.bangedup.com/archives/MicroRBHitWi
[ ] Yes
[ ] Yes
YAW
I love that story - the "lie detector" was a collander, which they put on the suspect's head (and yes it was 'wired' to the photocopier).
Google for "collander", "Baltimore" and "lie detector" for the full story. (In google groups, look in group a.f.u.)
This and more in the following book:
"Homicide, a year on the Killing Streets",
David Simon. ISBN 0-395-48829-X
YAW.
If it's toroidal, then they could put it in all 24 time zones!
YAW.
(yes, I know)
Your comment is OT!
YAW.
I'm a magnanimous fellow - I agree with you on this point. I said "system" rather than
"operating system" for a reason. i.e. the whole box. Everything between the mouse and the network card is included in that.
(I'm not being silly with th mouse - imagine one that maliciously claimed mouse movements and clicks in order to simulate a human's actions. 10000 pels up, 10000 pels right, 20 pels down, 20 pels right, right-click, 40 pels down, right-click - who knows what I've just invoked, but it could be bad.)
It's the apps that claim to be doing what the authors think the human will want to happen that are the problem. Blaming the underlying OS is pointless if the mail client can do anything autonimously that the user might want to do interactively.
I certainly blame outlook more than I blame the NT kernel, for example, for the state of affairs virus-wise in the world today.
YAW.
"a bunch of researchers have spent 60 million dollars trying to teach it common sense."
Link says:
"The military, which has invested $25 million in Cyc"
Now if you knew the absolute bollocks the military has spent money on, you'd ignore that figure entirely. The military has paid Ingo Swann (or was it P&T?) much more than that for bullshit remote-viewing "research" which has so far proclaimed great success, but been unalbe to reproduce anything under independent scrutiny. Go read James Randi and Martin Gardener, as they've written a fair bit on the absolute nonsense the military has spent its money on.
YAW.
The conditions aren't right. The competitors, and their bots should be the judges of whether they're talking to a bot or human. From what I understand, the people who are being fooled are the kind of people who'd argue with an answering machine.
Don't bin it - raise the bar.
YAW.