In the UK school is split into three terms... in the middle of each, you get a week off, and between them, you get two weeks off. Except over the summer when it's six weeks.
So there's more holiday through the year, but the summer vacation is shorter.
(This is probably because we don't have as much summer.)
In the UK the academic year is split according to the date of Easter. I recall hearing about an effort to move to a "metric" system which doesn't depend on Easter. This suddenly makes a lot of sense...
They were relatively reassuring about the health implications:
Toxicologist Dr David Ray, from the University of Nottingham, said about 6-8mg of mercury was present in a typical low-energy bulb, which he described as a "pretty small amount".
"Mercury accumulates in the body - especially the brain," he said. "The biggest danger is repeated exposure - a one off exposure is not as potentially dangerous compared to working in a light bulb factory.
"If you smash one bulb then that is not too much of a hazard. However, if you broke five bulbs in a small unventilated room then you might be in short term danger."
Something to be aware of, but not hugely worrying.
Well -- I would hope that they address that in the paper. Simply going off what's in the article, I agree, there's not much there... but, then, it's a popular science article. It's best not to expect too much:)
The "natural selection" they are talking about is exactly the same for cultural traits as for genetic traits. Good traits => higher chance of host surviving and passing on said traits. Bad traits => lower chance of host surviving and passing on said traits. This clearly applies to canoe design, regardless of whether other factors are involved because of actual engineering work. It's inescapable that if you do something that kills you then you won't be around to teach others to do it.
The important part is that they compare variation over time of functional and non-functional aspects of canoe design, and show that functional aspects have changed more slowly. They make the analogy to biological evolution where slower change is an indicator that the traits are being selected for, i.e. are subject to evolutionary pressure.
At this point I don't know enough about either field to comment, and apparently it's a controversial idea, but it certainly seems to me to be an argument worthy of attention.
I completely agree about the TouchStream being a wonderful device.
It's so configurable that you can chuck out the standard keyboard layout and build your own; I've been using a TouchStream with my own system for nearly three years now. As an example of what's possible, I use two-finger combinations for punctuation and four-finger chords for modifier keys... with the result that I never have to reach more than one key width from the home keys.
And in fact I've moved the rows closer together, so the maximum I have to move a finger is about three millimetres. One handy consequence is that the 'which key am I hitting' problem is more or less solved, since I'm always on the home keys. (Which have slight raised dimples, for those who haven't used one).
I really hope someone comes up with something as good as the TouchStream before mine start failing.
Nobody hires graduate/inexperienced programmers expecting them to be good; some things only come with experience.
Which is why lots of places don't hire graduates. The ones that do are more likely to be looking for people skills and problem solving than specific experience.
The best CV for a programmer is one with >5 years of directly relevant programming experience on it, in a position of responsibility. You can't compete with that, so don't worry about it. Just do what interests you... and be prepared to be persistent in the job hunt. Once you get into the game you will hopefully have the opportunity to prove that you're a good bet. After a few years in one job you are much more hirable and can move on if you want to.
It's interesting to note that given enough precision a blur is fully reversable.
In the frequency domain, a guassian blur reduces the amplitude of high frequencies; it doesn't drop them to zero. Simply multiply up again to get the original image.
Now, in practice this doesn't work particularly well because the high frequencies end up with such low amplitude that quantization destroys them.
The reason there is still a potential problem is that the 0-255 precision used on computers holds more information than the human eye can fully perceive. So it may be possible to unblur things when, to a person, the information is gone.
The 64 bit instructions aren't a superset; they're an entire new instruction set. The old instruction set is still supported, but you can't mix and match.
And while it's possible to run 32 bit apps on a 64 bit OS, this needs to be supported in the kernel; and there need to be 32 bit libraries available. It currently works reasonably smoothly under 64 bit linux, but the favoured method (as far as I'm aware) is to have an entire 32 bit install alongside the 64 bit one; any 32 bit apps run inside a chroot, so they see a 32 bit world. The kernel handles the remaining messy details.
Summary: it's hard. Why it hasn't been done in Windows, I'm not sure. (Possibly because they don't have chroot?!).
Er. The question was "don't people know that it can be faked", to which the answer was "no"; meaning no, people don't know that it can be faked, not, no, people don't know that it can't be faked.
Sorry for the confusion. But, to be clear, I do know that it can be faked. It's just most people don't.
It's a bitstream -- high/low resistance being one and zero -- and to get the message back you need to guess exactly the sequence of ones and zeros as Alice or Bob used.
If you guess the wrong sequence you don't get any indication that your guess was wrong -- you just get the wrong message. Similar idea to a one-time pad; if you use the wrong decryption key you can get any message at all with no indication that it wasn't the right message.
Slashdot Mirror
Er, mods ... I was being completely serious.
Do not laugh at us! Or we will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
In the UK school is split into three terms ... in the middle of each, you get a week off, and between them, you get two weeks off. Except over the summer when it's six weeks.
So there's more holiday through the year, but the summer vacation is shorter.
(This is probably because we don't have as much summer.)
Ah! The march of progress. Hasn't happened in the north-west yet, to my knowledge...
In the UK the academic year is split according to the date of Easter. I recall hearing about an effort to move to a "metric" system which doesn't depend on Easter. This suddenly makes a lot of sense...
This was on the BBC some months ago.
They were relatively reassuring about the health implications:
Something to be aware of, but not hugely worrying.
This is unfortunate ... but perhaps an opportunity to discuss how to write for results.
Actions that you are requesting need to be immediately obvious.
The rest of the letter can be junk. The first few lines should have said "please do not clean or replace my XBOX cover", probably in bold.
You can't expect people to read a story. (In this case even a clear letter probably wouldn't have helped, but it certainly wouldn't have hurt).
Well -- I would hope that they address that in the paper. Simply going off what's in the article, I agree, there's not much there ... but, then, it's a popular science article. It's best not to expect too much :)
The "natural selection" they are talking about is exactly the same for cultural traits as for genetic traits. Good traits => higher chance of host surviving and passing on said traits. Bad traits => lower chance of host surviving and passing on said traits. This clearly applies to canoe design, regardless of whether other factors are involved because of actual engineering work. It's inescapable that if you do something that kills you then you won't be around to teach others to do it.
The important part is that they compare variation over time of functional and non-functional aspects of canoe design, and show that functional aspects have changed more slowly. They make the analogy to biological evolution where slower change is an indicator that the traits are being selected for, i.e. are subject to evolutionary pressure.
At this point I don't know enough about either field to comment, and apparently it's a controversial idea, but it certainly seems to me to be an argument worthy of attention.
I completely agree about the TouchStream being a wonderful device.
It's so configurable that you can chuck out the standard keyboard layout and build your own; I've been using a TouchStream with my own system for nearly three years now. As an example of what's possible, I use two-finger combinations for punctuation and four-finger chords for modifier keys ... with the result that I never have to reach more than one key width from the home keys.
And in fact I've moved the rows closer together, so the maximum I have to move a finger is about three millimetres. One handy consequence is that the 'which key am I hitting' problem is more or less solved, since I'm always on the home keys. (Which have slight raised dimples, for those who haven't used one).
I really hope someone comes up with something as good as the TouchStream before mine start failing.
Fingerworks made one, it's called the iGesture NumPad and it's basically half a TouchStream:
http://www.fingerworks.com/igesture_numpad.html
Sadly as with the TouchStream the only way to get these now is second hand.
Nobody hires graduate/inexperienced programmers expecting them to be good; some things only come with experience.
Which is why lots of places don't hire graduates. The ones that do are more likely to be looking for people skills and problem solving than specific experience.
The best CV for a programmer is one with >5 years of directly relevant programming experience on it, in a position of responsibility. You can't compete with that, so don't worry about it. Just do what interests you ... and be prepared to be persistent in the job hunt. Once you get into the game you will hopefully have the opportunity to prove that you're a good bet. After a few years in one job you are much more hirable and can move on if you want to.
400-600 people on Linux use bbc.co.uk (in the UK)? I don't think so...
Someone needs to recheck their server logs.
Storage isn't a problem, particularly... you can always throw away the results and recalculate every time. There, storage problem is gone :)
Run time, now, that's a problem...
It's interesting to note that given enough precision a blur is fully reversable.
In the frequency domain, a guassian blur reduces the amplitude of high frequencies; it doesn't drop them to zero. Simply multiply up again to get the original image.
Now, in practice this doesn't work particularly well because the high frequencies end up with such low amplitude that quantization destroys them.
The reason there is still a potential problem is that the 0-255 precision used on computers holds more information than the human eye can fully perceive. So it may be possible to unblur things when, to a person, the information is gone.
Actually it's correct. The POSIX standard specifies the timezones backwards.
See, e.g.: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4813746
Clever, eh?
Come off it... that's not even enough for an Office document standard.
Worthless!
Hmm. I'll see your gravitational force and raise you one electromagnetic force.
I'd say that one's more important to our everyday lives. Given that it's possible to live without gravity but not without molecules...
It's not nearly that simple.
The 64 bit instructions aren't a superset; they're an entire new instruction set. The old instruction set is still supported, but you can't mix and match.
And while it's possible to run 32 bit apps on a 64 bit OS, this needs to be supported in the kernel; and there need to be 32 bit libraries available. It currently works reasonably smoothly under 64 bit linux, but the favoured method (as far as I'm aware) is to have an entire 32 bit install alongside the 64 bit one; any 32 bit apps run inside a chroot, so they see a 32 bit world. The kernel handles the remaining messy details.
Summary: it's hard. Why it hasn't been done in Windows, I'm not sure. (Possibly because they don't have chroot?!).
Ew.
Windows reflect in the dock... that strikes me as a really horrible idea.
Oh.
That was my first thought, but then I realised there actually was potential for confusion, and you didn't give any sarcasm hints ;)
Er. The question was "don't people know that it can be faked", to which the answer was "no"; meaning no, people don't know that it can be faked, not, no, people don't know that it can't be faked.
Sorry for the confusion. But, to be clear, I do know that it can be faked. It's just most people don't.
Doesn't help in the slightest.
Don't people know by now that the 'from' address can be easily changed?
(That was a rhetorical question; they answer is evidently 'no'.)
Er. I don't think my post contained the word "modify".
Your post makes sense, but it doesn't seem to be a reply to mine...
Hmm. Seems "take" is not the right word.
After all, copying (free) software does not deprive the writers of anything.
Perhaps "use, use, use" would be better?
It's a bitstream -- high/low resistance being one and zero -- and to get the message back you need to guess exactly the sequence of ones and zeros as Alice or Bob used.
If you guess the wrong sequence you don't get any indication that your guess was wrong -- you just get the wrong message. Similar idea to a one-time pad; if you use the wrong decryption key you can get any message at all with no indication that it wasn't the right message.