This is what I got from the abstract (being an undergrad in EE).
We've always been taught that the conditional entropy, H(X|Y) >= 0, but what they're saying is that somehow in a Quantum communications channel, H(X|Y) can be 0 by definition as well.
"In the "information age" as they used to call it, secrets and closed policies just aren't feasable anymore."
Really?
This would seem to contradict you:
"The Bush administration filed sealed documents with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan in the case that the American Civil Liberties Union brought, aiming to keep hidden dozens of photographs. The ACLU is seeking information on treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.
The administration incredibly contends that releasing the pictures would violate the Geneva Conventions rules by exposing the prisoners to additional humiliation." From: http://www.roanoke.com/editorials%5C28746.html
Hate to say it buddy, but even under FOIA, it often can take up to a decade to get information from the government. This is especially true given this administration's extreme interpretation of Executive Priviledge (can't say Clinton was any better, but at least he was only trying to cover up sex scandals versus real crime). John Roberts' past judicial record is also being kept from the public. For those saying that it's lawyer-client confidentiality, keep in mind who the client is when we're talking about the Solicitor General (hint: it's "We the people...").
We've a long way to go still before we reach a transparent government.
Japan not mentioning the medical experimentation it conducted on Chinese civilians as well as the number of Korean/Chinese women forced into sexual slavery is sort of like Germany forgetting the "incident" (official Japanese textbook phrasing) where 6 million Jews died.
Would we tolerate the latter? Of course not. Why do we tolerate the former then?
Btw, I've taken US History/US History AP in American high schools., and it has extensive coverage of the oppression that Native Americans suffered, from the time Columbus landed all the way to the Trail of Tears. Do you know how Japanese textbooks characterize the Rape of Nanking?
The Rape of Nanking is described as an "incident" where the Japanese Army met fierce resisitance in taking Nanking (this seems to gloss over the fact that all Chinese troops had withdrawn from the city, and many citizens were displaying Japanese flags from their windows to get in the good graces of the conquerers). This is NOT from the highly disputed minority textbook which doesn't mention it at ALL, but rather from the one which about 40% of Japanese High School students read. In a recent radio broadcst (~2 weeks ago) I heard on NPR, a visiting Japanese psychology professor recalled incidents where college freshmen asked him whether America won the war, or if Japan did.
Imagine the international condemnation of the Holocaust was referred to as an incident, and not covered beyond two sentences in the entire history book. The German people have dealt with their atrocities in WWII; Willi Brandt, a former German Chancellor, KNELT in front of the Jewish Holocaust memorial. When has the Emporer of Japan done the same for the Chinese and Korean people? Don't give me the crap about apologies already being made; what use is there for apologies when the mindset of an entire nation, as reflected through its' educational system, fails to appreciate the extreme pain and anguish it has caused just 50 years before?
Just to be clear, I'm not justifying the use of the atomic bomb on Japanese cities with what I said earlier. It is no less horrific, regardless of Japan's wartime activities. I just wish ensure that certain parts of Japan's wartime past don't get overshadowed.
#1. WiFi phones are still a ways off, so there are no enterprise level products as of yet.
#2. How do you tell where a call is coming from? An Ethernet jack can be linked to a physical location (i.e. Ethernet Jack 5234-6 is IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and located on Floor 3 Cube G2-5). It IS possible to triangulate the position of a WiFi phone, but that's done with a large measure of error, and you need good signal strength from more than one AP. There's a reason E911 for cell phones approximates location to a 100-foot radius or so.
#3. WiFI can be jammed. Want to knock out 911 service in a 100-foot radius? Just blast a crapload of power around 2.4 GHz.
I've watched some Stargate Atlantis, but could never stick with it. There's no moral ambiguity in the show; the main character, the Colonel, responds to everything with a clear-cut moral choice. Everything has to be done based on principle - no compromise with reality, and it always seems to work out in their favor.
Battlestar Galactica portrays things in a much more "gray" way, forcing characters to make terrible choices where there's no morally superior answer (i.e. in "33" when they blow up the Olympic Carrier). This, mixed in with the Cylons looking like humans, feeling like humans, makes the entire of the show even more amigious, which is what sets it apart from most of the other shows on TV. There's no clear cut enemy - no clear "us" and "them," and thus, much more realistic. Even with the advanced technology/sci-fi nature of the show, it manages to portray human behavior/moral dilemmas much more realistically than the mainstream shows set in the present time on Earth.
I'll paraphrase a quote I heard from somewhere, "I'd rather watch plausible human behavior in an implausible setting than watch implausible human behavior in a plausible setting."
What does a country being democratic have to do with it?
I seem to recall the US removing several democratically elected heads of state in South/Central America just because they saw them as threats to US economic/polic interests...
Let's also not forget the Iranian coup, (from Wikipedia):
"By the 20th century Iranians were longing for a change and thus followed the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905/1911. In 1953 Iran's prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq, who had been elected to parliament in 1923 and again in 1944 and who had been prime minister since 1951, was removed from power in a complex plot orchestrated by British and US intelligence agencies ("Operation Ajax").
Many scholars suspect that this ouster was motivated by British-US opposition to Mossadeq's attempt to nationalize Iran's oil. Following Mossadeq's fall, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (Iran's monarch) grew increasingly dictatorial... His autocratic rule, including systematic torture and other human rights violations, led to the Iranian revolution and overthrow of his regime in 1979."
"Many races believe that it was created by some sort of God, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure.
The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call The Coming of The Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel.
However, the Great Green Arkleseizure Theory is not widely accepted outside Viltvodle VI and so, the Universe being the puzzling place it is, other explanations are constantly being sought."*
Obviously the Viltvodle VI people are correct.
*Douglas Adams: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
A signal which comes out cleaner on the scope, up to a certain point, will also sound better to the human hear, but past that point, it just comes down to preference. This is why studio engineers often add "color" to a song, and why some audiophiles still swear by vaccum tubes. The vaccum tubes don't produce anywhere near a flat frequency response through the 20kHz range, but instead color it in a way that people describe as "warm."
The point is, you can try and make changes to flatten the frequency response as much as possible, but it may NOT be the sound output you're looking for. The scope would, of course, be useful to track down problems with power supply noise, but when it comes down to swapping op-amps or other stuff, it's often times more subjective than not, which is what his article says. Here, seeing the scope output is useless, because the only important this is whether you like the resulting sound output.
I'd like to agree with you on the part about the clock though, but I have never looked clock outputs when they get shaken/etc, so can't really comment.
I meant no comparison between the "Gang of 14" in the Senate, who I admire for their principle, or if not that, at least their political skill, and the "Gang of Four" in 1960's China. The latter created a political firestorm in China that resulted in the death of untold number of civilians, and was a huge setback for Chinese intellectualism. Hundreds of thousands of college students and professors were sent to rural farms to be re-educaed by peasants and to do manual labor. Millions disappeared or were sent to remote jails under conditions similar to Soviet Gulags.
"The group included Mao's widow Jiang Qing and three of her close associates, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen." ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Four
The "Gang of 14" in the Senate was just something the press came up with as a catchy headline.
I happen to think Gonzalez shouldn't hold any public office, given his deplorable views on human rights, but his nomination WOULD be the politically moderate decision, since another Scalia/Thomas would generate a huge political battle.
Human rights doesn't get the far left/right nearly as riled up as abortion/seperation of church and state; you can choose to disagree with the status quo (which I do), but that doesn't mean it's not true.
We need justices who will follow the Constitution closely, and stick with strict constructionism:
1. Judges who will allow state marijuana legalization to stand because the 10th Amendment reserves all rights not listed above to the States.
2. Judges who will preserve abortion because a woman's right to privacy is given in the 4th Amendment, and not open to the federal government to legislate.
3. Judges who will ensure that any detention authorized by the Executive is subject to independent review, and preferably, trial by jury, thus maintaining the Bill of Rights' delcaration of due process and speedy trial as valid even during the "War on terror."
4. Judges who will ensure that the 1st Amendment's prohibition on the State establishment of religion is maintained, so that for every 10 Commandments we will also have the Analects of Confucious and quotations from Mohammed displayed in Texas and Kentucky.
This decision IS important to nerds. How many of us here regularly complain about the deprivation of our rights under the Patriot Act and the Guantanomo detentions?
Sandara Day O'Conner voted in Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld that the "War On Terror" did not give the Executive a blank check to detain individuals without independent review, which I think most here would agree with. This may not have to do with the latest case mods, but this affects all of us. She managed to piss off the left AND the right, and that's the mark of a truly neutral jurist.
"It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation's commitment to due process is most severely tested," she wrote last year for the court in the Iraq-war era case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. "And it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad. . . . We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens."
- Washington Post Article, referring to her decision in Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld.
This is MORE important than if Rehnquist left...
on
Justice O'Connor Retiring
·
· Score: 4, Informative
O'Conner's retirement is actually much more important than if Rehnquist had retired; on a pretty wide array of social policies, i.e. abortion and affirmative action, O'Conner has been the swing vote in the 5-4 decisions. Rehnquist, on the other hand, tends to vote conserative, period. Slashdotters might be pleased to know she was a key vote in the challenge to the President to arbitrarily detain individuals w/out review:
"It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation's commitment to due process is most severely tested," she wrote last year for the court in the Iraq-war era case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. "And it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad. . . . We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens." ~ taken from the Washington Post article today.
There are pretty much two options for Bush to play this:
1) He tries to appeal to the Hispanic vote, key for his party in upcoming elections, by nominating Alberto Gonzalez. Problem is, the Christian Right, would be pretty pissed about this, since they think he'll vote to keep Roe v. Wade and affirmative action. Just a reminder though, this is the same guy who authored the infamous legal documents saying we don't need to treat prisoners from Afghanistan under the Geneva Conventions, and wanted to redefine torture more loosely.
2) He tries to please his core-base, the social conservatives, by nominating someone likely to overturn Roe v. Wade, and affirmative action. This'll set off a firestorm on the right AND left.
Option 1 would be the far more moderate choice, and less likely to create a protracted battle in the Senate, which SEEMS to be what he was hinting at he wants when he said in his speech that he wanted a "dignified" nomination process - of course this could just be posturing.
Another interesting tidbit will be to see how the "Gang of 14" in the Senate, who avoided the filibuster showdown, will react if Bush goes with Option 2. No offense to the "Gang of 14," but I think that pressure from far right and left interest groups are gonna tear the agreement under asap. Especially since Frist hates the agreement, since it was pretty much a slap in the face to him when key Republicans went around him to get it done. I doubt he'll lift a finger to try and negotiate if Bush nominates a social conservative like Scalia or Thomas.
Just a few thoughts. The comings weeks will be fun to watch.
You mean like a CSA (carry select adder), which've been around for years and years?
They're pretty commonly used to break up longer-bit additions sequences, and their underlying premise is to calculate the result for out comes if the addition produces a carry and if it doesn't. Then, one of the two branches is propogated depending on earlier segments. A 2 to 1 mux with the select signal controlled by the previous segment is pretty much how the "decision" is made.
Pretty common stuff people came out with years ago, nothing innovative here.
Yeah you're right, since Huffman --> H(X). I'm just saying that a 1% compression margin after running it through the LZ alogorithm is not impossible given that you have such a huge file (700 MB to 1.4 GB) and differences in implementation specifics.
Yes, theoretically, it's impossible, since the output of a good source code should be entirely random, and LZ should screw up badly if you run it on the output of a source code. But try it on a 700 MB avi sometime; every now and then you get 1-2% compression anyways.
he COULD be right...
on
DivX 6.0 is Out
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
"LZ is a lossless alogorithm and no matter how "aggressive" LZ is, it can't come anywhere near the compression ratio of a properly configured divx encoding because the divx encoding is lossy - it throws out data."
It's possible that even after divx is done encoding a file, there's still a certain amount of "order" left. Divx encodes using perceptual quality as it's perogative; it's not a source-coder, which is the reason it performs so much better on video files. However, it IS possible that LZ77/whatever year, is able to squeeze a little bit more size out of it, since LZ is a general source coder.
I don't think Tom is saying that LZ is as capable as divx at compressing video files, he's just saying there's enough "order" left over in the file after divx to make a 1% difference after using LZ, which is entirely possible. Almost ANY given bit-sequency that's not entirely random will have a 1-2% compression margin if you use LZ on it, depending on your window size, etc. On a 700 MB file, it's not inconceivable that more than a few long-sequence matches will occur.
Contemporaneous scientists did not challenge Galileo; the Church did. In fact, Copernicus, one of the leading astronomers of the day, was in total agreement with Galileo. His persecution and the promotion of Helio-centrism was entirely put forth by the Church - the people debating against Galileo were monks and priests, not scientists.
I also, have NEVER, heard of any scientists contemparenous to Galileo using fake or fudged data to refute him; their arguments were entirely theological, not scientific.
"Yes, science is by nature self-correcting, but when the errors are endemically embedded in the existing systems it can take a lot of time and convict a lot of Gallileos before it gets around to it."
Galileo was persecuted by the Catholic church because he didn't follow the Aristotelian view of the universe. It has absolutely nothing to do with fudged evidence by previous scientists.
What difference does that make? Science and reason have been along for quite a while now, and yet still many doubt/are unaware of fundamental scientific advances.
If aliens suddenly come down from heaven with the Truth, I'd guess that 1/3 of the world will believe them mindlessly and possibly form a new religion, 1/3 will believe them after methodical inquiry, and 1/3 will stick to their old beliefs regardless of the validity of the aliens' claims.
According to these definitions I guess the US governemnt's actions in the 20th Century would constitute "terrorism" then.
(IV) An assassination.
(V) The use of any- (a) biological agent, chemical agent, or *nuclear weapon* or device, or
(b) explosive, 4/ firearm, or other weapon or dangerous device (other than for mere personal monetary gain), with intent to endanger, directly or indirectly, the safety of one or more individuals or to cause substantial damage to property.
Really too bad though, because of the first part: "(A) the organization is a foreign organization"
Slashdot Mirror
This is what I got from the abstract (being an undergrad in EE).
We've always been taught that the conditional entropy, H(X|Y) >= 0, but what they're saying is that somehow in a Quantum communications channel, H(X|Y) can be 0 by definition as well.
So yeah I guess this comment contributes nothing.
"In the "information age" as they used to call it, secrets and closed policies just aren't feasable anymore."
Really?
This would seem to contradict you:
"The Bush administration filed sealed documents with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan in the case that the American Civil Liberties Union brought, aiming to keep hidden dozens of photographs. The ACLU is seeking information on treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.
The administration incredibly contends that releasing the pictures would violate the Geneva Conventions rules by exposing the prisoners to additional humiliation."
From: http://www.roanoke.com/editorials%5C28746.html
Hate to say it buddy, but even under FOIA, it often can take up to a decade to get information from the government. This is especially true given this administration's extreme interpretation of Executive Priviledge (can't say Clinton was any better, but at least he was only trying to cover up sex scandals versus real crime). John Roberts' past judicial record is also being kept from the public. For those saying that it's lawyer-client confidentiality, keep in mind who the client is when we're talking about the Solicitor General (hint: it's "We the people...").
We've a long way to go still before we reach a transparent government.
Let me put it in perspective for you.
Japan not mentioning the medical experimentation it conducted on Chinese civilians as well as the number of Korean/Chinese women forced into sexual slavery is sort of like Germany forgetting the "incident" (official Japanese textbook phrasing) where 6 million Jews died.
Would we tolerate the latter? Of course not. Why do we tolerate the former then?
Btw, I've taken US History/US History AP in American high schools., and it has extensive coverage of the oppression that Native Americans suffered, from the time Columbus landed all the way to the Trail of Tears. Do you know how Japanese textbooks characterize the Rape of Nanking?
The Rape of Nanking is described as an "incident" where the Japanese Army met fierce resisitance in taking Nanking (this seems to gloss over the fact that all Chinese troops had withdrawn from the city, and many citizens were displaying Japanese flags from their windows to get in the good graces of the conquerers). This is NOT from the highly disputed minority textbook which doesn't mention it at ALL, but rather from the one which about 40% of Japanese High School students read. In a recent radio broadcst (~2 weeks ago) I heard on NPR, a visiting Japanese psychology professor recalled incidents where college freshmen asked him whether America won the war, or if Japan did.
Imagine the international condemnation of the Holocaust was referred to as an incident, and not covered beyond two sentences in the entire history book. The German people have dealt with their atrocities in WWII; Willi Brandt, a former German Chancellor, KNELT in front of the Jewish Holocaust memorial. When has the Emporer of Japan done the same for the Chinese and Korean people? Don't give me the crap about apologies already being made; what use is there for apologies when the mindset of an entire nation, as reflected through its' educational system, fails to appreciate the extreme pain and anguish it has caused just 50 years before?
Just to be clear, I'm not justifying the use of the atomic bomb on Japanese cities with what I said earlier. It is no less horrific, regardless of Japan's wartime activities. I just wish ensure that certain parts of Japan's wartime past don't get overshadowed.
No I'm pretty sure you're not, given the fact that there are 300 posts above you saying the same thing, just worded slightly differently...
All in all, it's been a stimulating discussion.
Ironically, the Powell Doctrine also calls for:
s on plans/iraq/powelldoctrine_short.html
1. "...that military action should be used only as a last resort and only if there is a clear risk to national security by the intended target..."
2. "...there must be strong support for the campaign by the general public..."
3. "...and there must be a clear exit strategy from the conflict in which the military is engaged."
~http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/teachers/les
Now put that into the perspective of the Iraq War, and it's obvious that Powell lost the internal fight to Rumsfeld.
That's a bad idea, and here's a few reasons why:
#1. WiFi phones are still a ways off, so there are no enterprise level products as of yet.
#2. How do you tell where a call is coming from? An Ethernet jack can be linked to a physical location (i.e. Ethernet Jack 5234-6 is IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and located on Floor 3 Cube G2-5). It IS possible to triangulate the position of a WiFi phone, but that's done with a large measure of error, and you need good signal strength from more than one AP. There's a reason E911 for cell phones approximates location to a 100-foot radius or so.
#3. WiFI can be jammed. Want to knock out 911 service in a 100-foot radius? Just blast a crapload of power around 2.4 GHz.
I actually prefer it this way.
I've watched some Stargate Atlantis, but could never stick with it. There's no moral ambiguity in the show; the main character, the Colonel, responds to everything with a clear-cut moral choice. Everything has to be done based on principle - no compromise with reality, and it always seems to work out in their favor.
Battlestar Galactica portrays things in a much more "gray" way, forcing characters to make terrible choices where there's no morally superior answer (i.e. in "33" when they blow up the Olympic Carrier). This, mixed in with the Cylons looking like humans, feeling like humans, makes the entire of the show even more amigious, which is what sets it apart from most of the other shows on TV. There's no clear cut enemy - no clear "us" and "them," and thus, much more realistic. Even with the advanced technology/sci-fi nature of the show, it manages to portray human behavior/moral dilemmas much more realistically than the mainstream shows set in the present time on Earth.
I'll paraphrase a quote I heard from somewhere, "I'd rather watch plausible human behavior in an implausible setting than watch implausible human behavior in a plausible setting."
What does a country being democratic have to do with it?
I seem to recall the US removing several democratically elected heads of state in South/Central America just because they saw them as threats to US economic/polic interests...
Let's also not forget the Iranian coup, (from Wikipedia):
"By the 20th century Iranians were longing for a change and thus followed the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905/1911. In 1953 Iran's prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq, who had been elected to parliament in 1923 and again in 1944 and who had been prime minister since 1951, was removed from power in a complex plot orchestrated by British and US intelligence agencies ("Operation Ajax").
Many scholars suspect that this ouster was motivated by British-US opposition to Mossadeq's attempt to nationalize Iran's oil. Following Mossadeq's fall, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (Iran's monarch) grew increasingly dictatorial... His autocratic rule, including systematic torture and other human rights violations, led to the Iranian revolution and overthrow of his regime in 1979."
one with the gay black Republican.
"Many races believe that it was created by some sort of God, though
the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire
Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great
Green Arkleseizure.
The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call
The Coming of The Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures
with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore unique in being the
only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the
wheel.
However, the Great Green Arkleseizure Theory is not widely
accepted outside Viltvodle VI and so, the Universe being the puzzling
place it is, other explanations are constantly being sought."*
Obviously the Viltvodle VI people are correct.
*Douglas Adams: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
A signal which comes out cleaner on the scope, up to a certain point, will also sound better to the human hear, but past that point, it just comes down to preference. This is why studio engineers often add "color" to a song, and why some audiophiles still swear by vaccum tubes. The vaccum tubes don't produce anywhere near a flat frequency response through the 20kHz range, but instead color it in a way that people describe as "warm."
The point is, you can try and make changes to flatten the frequency response as much as possible, but it may NOT be the sound output you're looking for. The scope would, of course, be useful to track down problems with power supply noise, but when it comes down to swapping op-amps or other stuff, it's often times more subjective than not, which is what his article says. Here, seeing the scope output is useless, because the only important this is whether you like the resulting sound output.
I'd like to agree with you on the part about the clock though, but I have never looked clock outputs when they get shaken/etc, so can't really comment.
I was thinking of the same thing after Nov 5, last year.
Scary parallels.
I meant no comparison between the "Gang of 14" in the Senate, who I admire for their principle, or if not that, at least their political skill, and the "Gang of Four" in 1960's China. The latter created a political firestorm in China that resulted in the death of untold number of civilians, and was a huge setback for Chinese intellectualism. Hundreds of thousands of college students and professors were sent to rural farms to be re-educaed by peasants and to do manual labor. Millions disappeared or were sent to remote jails under conditions similar to Soviet Gulags.
"The group included Mao's widow Jiang Qing and three of her close associates, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen." ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Four
The "Gang of 14" in the Senate was just something the press came up with as a catchy headline.
Care to explain why you think that?
I happen to think Gonzalez shouldn't hold any public office, given his deplorable views on human rights, but his nomination WOULD be the politically moderate decision, since another Scalia/Thomas would generate a huge political battle.
Human rights doesn't get the far left/right nearly as riled up as abortion/seperation of church and state; you can choose to disagree with the status quo (which I do), but that doesn't mean it's not true.
We need justices who will follow the Constitution closely, and stick with strict constructionism:
1. Judges who will allow state marijuana legalization to stand because the 10th Amendment reserves all rights not listed above to the States.
2. Judges who will preserve abortion because a woman's right to privacy is given in the 4th Amendment, and not open to the federal government to legislate.
3. Judges who will ensure that any detention authorized by the Executive is subject to independent review, and preferably, trial by jury, thus maintaining the Bill of Rights' delcaration of due process and speedy trial as valid even during the "War on terror."
4. Judges who will ensure that the 1st Amendment's prohibition on the State establishment of religion is maintained, so that for every 10 Commandments we will also have the Analects of Confucious and quotations from Mohammed displayed in Texas and Kentucky.
Good.
I agree with you.
This decision IS important to nerds. How many of us here regularly complain about the deprivation of our rights under the Patriot Act and the Guantanomo detentions?
Sandara Day O'Conner voted in Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld that the "War On Terror" did not give the Executive a blank check to detain individuals without independent review, which I think most here would agree with. This may not have to do with the latest case mods, but this affects all of us. She managed to piss off the left AND the right, and that's the mark of a truly neutral jurist.
"It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation's commitment to due process is most severely tested," she wrote last year for the court in the Iraq-war era case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. "And it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad. . . . We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens."
- Washington Post Article, referring to her decision in Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld.
O'Conner's retirement is actually much more important than if Rehnquist had retired; on a pretty wide array of social policies, i.e. abortion and affirmative action, O'Conner has been the swing vote in the 5-4 decisions. Rehnquist, on the other hand, tends to vote conserative, period. Slashdotters might be pleased to know she was a key vote in the challenge to the President to arbitrarily detain individuals w/out review:
"It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation's commitment to due process is most severely tested," she wrote last year for the court in the Iraq-war era case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. "And it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad. . . . We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens." ~ taken from the Washington Post article today.
There are pretty much two options for Bush to play this:
1) He tries to appeal to the Hispanic vote, key for his party in upcoming elections, by nominating Alberto Gonzalez. Problem is, the Christian Right, would be pretty pissed about this, since they think he'll vote to keep Roe v. Wade and affirmative action. Just a reminder though, this is the same guy who authored the infamous legal documents saying we don't need to treat prisoners from Afghanistan under the Geneva Conventions, and wanted to redefine torture more loosely.
2) He tries to please his core-base, the social conservatives, by nominating someone likely to overturn Roe v. Wade, and affirmative action. This'll set off a firestorm on the right AND left.
Option 1 would be the far more moderate choice, and less likely to create a protracted battle in the Senate, which SEEMS to be what he was hinting at he wants when he said in his speech that he wanted a "dignified" nomination process - of course this could just be posturing.
Another interesting tidbit will be to see how the "Gang of 14" in the Senate, who avoided the filibuster showdown, will react if Bush goes with Option 2. No offense to the "Gang of 14," but I think that pressure from far right and left interest groups are gonna tear the agreement under asap. Especially since Frist hates the agreement, since it was pretty much a slap in the face to him when key Republicans went around him to get it done. I doubt he'll lift a finger to try and negotiate if Bush nominates a social conservative like Scalia or Thomas.
Just a few thoughts. The comings weeks will be fun to watch.
You mean like a CSA (carry select adder), which've been around for years and years?
- MS/Image2.gif
They're pretty commonly used to break up longer-bit additions sequences, and their underlying premise is to calculate the result for out comes if the addition produces a carry and if it doesn't. Then, one of the two branches is propogated depending on earlier segments. A 2 to 1 mux with the select signal controlled by the previous segment is pretty much how the "decision" is made.
Pretty common stuff people came out with years ago, nothing innovative here.
Here's a pic of a CSA:
http://www.ecse.rpi.edu/frisc/theses/ErnestThesis
"iPod digital media device?" Is that really neccesary?
How about, "iPod mp3 player?"
Yeah you're right, since Huffman --> H(X). I'm just saying that a 1% compression margin after running it through the LZ alogorithm is not impossible given that you have such a huge file (700 MB to 1.4 GB) and differences in implementation specifics.
Yes, theoretically, it's impossible, since the output of a good source code should be entirely random, and LZ should screw up badly if you run it on the output of a source code. But try it on a 700 MB avi sometime; every now and then you get 1-2% compression anyways.
"LZ is a lossless alogorithm and no matter how "aggressive" LZ is, it can't come anywhere near the compression ratio of a properly configured divx encoding because the divx encoding is lossy - it throws out data."
It's possible that even after divx is done encoding a file, there's still a certain amount of "order" left. Divx encodes using perceptual quality as it's perogative; it's not a source-coder, which is the reason it performs so much better on video files. However, it IS possible that LZ77/whatever year, is able to squeeze a little bit more size out of it, since LZ is a general source coder.
I don't think Tom is saying that LZ is as capable as divx at compressing video files, he's just saying there's enough "order" left over in the file after divx to make a 1% difference after using LZ, which is entirely possible. Almost ANY given bit-sequency that's not entirely random will have a 1-2% compression margin if you use LZ on it, depending on your window size, etc. On a 700 MB file, it's not inconceivable that more than a few long-sequence matches will occur.
Contemporaneous scientists did not challenge Galileo; the Church did. In fact, Copernicus, one of the leading astronomers of the day, was in total agreement with Galileo. His persecution and the promotion of Helio-centrism was entirely put forth by the Church - the people debating against Galileo were monks and priests, not scientists.
I also, have NEVER, heard of any scientists contemparenous to Galileo using fake or fudged data to refute him; their arguments were entirely theological, not scientific.
"Yes, science is by nature self-correcting, but when the errors are endemically embedded in the existing systems it can take a lot of time and convict a lot of Gallileos before it gets around to it."
Galileo was persecuted by the Catholic church because he didn't follow the Aristotelian view of the universe. It has absolutely nothing to do with fudged evidence by previous scientists.
What difference does that make? Science and reason have been along for quite a while now, and yet still many doubt/are unaware of fundamental scientific advances.
If aliens suddenly come down from heaven with the Truth, I'd guess that 1/3 of the world will believe them mindlessly and possibly form a new religion, 1/3 will believe them after methodical inquiry, and 1/3 will stick to their old beliefs regardless of the validity of the aliens' claims.
According to these definitions I guess the US governemnt's actions in the 20th Century would constitute "terrorism" then.
(IV) An assassination.
(V) The use of any-
(a) biological agent, chemical agent, or *nuclear weapon* or device, or
(b) explosive, 4/ firearm, or other weapon or dangerous device (other than for mere personal monetary gain), with intent to endanger, directly or indirectly, the safety of one or more individuals or to cause substantial damage to property.
Really too bad though, because of the first part:
"(A) the organization is a foreign organization"
Guess that settles it.