Jeeze, it's not so bad. In upper division and graduate math classes, they have you write proofs in exams. You have to
1) Remember definitions.
2) String statements together in logical, consistent groups.
3) Reach the proper conclusion with the hypotheses given.
4) Justify interesting or tricky steps.
Sounds a lot like creating code in an exam situation. A reasonable professor (or TA more likely) will read the code/proof looking for the the correct ideas and flow more than perfect pedantic correctness. At least that's what I did when I graded for upper division classes.
Well, except that the whole hundreds digit rule breaks down completely in the SF Bay Area. 280 is not a bypass - and never actually intersects 80. 880 intersects 80, and 280, but the long way around. It was renamed to 880 to get Federal Funding.
580 is a To, I suppose, but 980 is a bypass. (Goes from 880 to 580!) Don't ask me to classify what 480 was before it was removed, or 680 either, and I think 780 is around somewhere, and 380 sits pretty at 1 mile long.
See the excellent interstate site http://www.kurumi.com/roads/3di/3di-table.html
The 'law' of supply and demand gets broken when the providers of the supply collude, and agree on pricing. This is why there are anti-trust laws. The fact that CDs are as expensive as DVDs is a symptom of the record companies illegal control of the industry.
On this, you are wrong.
It's all about context. 'Nigger' was used by whites as a derogatory term, used in a racist way for decades. A white man saying it has a hard time escaping the context. Not so when a black man says it.
Just like context matters in sex discrimination. Telling an off color joke to you female co-worker you have known for 5 years is very different from telling a new employee who you manage the very same joke. It's about trust, understanding, and power.
Call a cracker a hacker - you are modded to -1!
rbb
>Now. As a sidenote.
>
>Black man says nigger - it's culture.
>White man says nigger - it's racist.
>Italian man says wop - it's culture.
>Asian man says wop - it's racist.
>Indian man says chink - it's racist.
>Asian man says chink - it's culture.
If you read the Reuters article carefully, it does not say a digital -> digital compression of 1:100, but implies a better way of encoding / compressing digital -> analog -> digital, with the analog bandwidth being much greater than today.
Thats all the stuff where they talk about Dr. Claude Shannon and information theory. (They could have been clearer about it, but that's PR flacks for you.)
examine the quote
'"What we've developed is a new plateau in communications theory," St. George said. "We are expecting to produce the enormous capacity of analog signaling, with the benefit of the noise-free integrity of digital communications."'
Sounds like they are trying to shove more data into an analog stream, using wacky math, than would normally be allowed.
Excuse me, but who in this world, except lawyers, has the knowledge to read and understand all those liscenses and terms. (And they probably don't have the time.)
These type of things are written to be obscure, misleading, and innocuous sounding. On top of that, the mass market consumer has very little negotiating power over these things. This differs greatly from 'real' contracts, like employment contracts and home mortgages.
I damned well took the time & energy to read and understand all those things when I bought my house, and feel good about it. Doing the same for every piece of software or service I purchase would be a waste of my finite lifetime.
Soooooo, what's the answer? There are laws regulating all types of contracts. These laws often include consumer rights that cannot be disclaimed or negotiated away. Laws that protect little old ladies from usury and such. Lobby the Gov to make similar laws for privacy.
AND post to slashdot or other populist web sites to educate the public about how bad these things are.
I'm sure 98% of the anti-nuke activists are not nuclear physicists. (sp?) And many are more phobic than rational about the whole subject, true.
Part of the problem as you suspect is the media, and the sound-bite culture. If you have to take more than 60 seconds to explain your position, they show someone else.
So, let me explan my problems with Fission Power.
1) Govt & industry have been irresponsible, and I don't trust them. Dumping nuke waste just off the SF Bay, near the Farallon islands, in prime fishing areas, and covering it up, hiding the records, etc.
2) Chernoble (sp). Sure, US plants are better, but see #1, and I don't like the tiny risk of poisoning large tracts of land.
3) Subsidies. When the plants pay their own storage costs, insurance, and all, not having it paid for by taxpayers, I'll listen. But note #1. I would not trust industry studies much.
4) Weapon proliferation. The more Plutonium and U235 there is, the harder it is to control it all.
The second amendment never allowed citizens to own whatever weapon they wanted, with no restrictions whatsoever. Most felons are not allowed to own guns. Violation of the 2nd, or keeping people safe?
Nukes, howitizers, and land mines, all outlawed for the common man!!!!! My rights are being trampled on. When I play my stereo at full volume at 2 am, my neighbors call the cops, who make me turn it down! Abuse!
Sarcasm aside, DMCA is a bad law, but the 2nd amendment won't help you one bit.
Since SETI is most likely purely CPU intensive, there is very little the OS can do to make it faster or slower (apart from
deliberately getting in the way, of course).
On the other hand, the compiler makes a tremendous difference, and so do the compilation options.
Since we do not know which compiler was involved, and which options it was given, the benchmark is fairly useless.
Actually, the OS's can make a difference in performance, even with the same calculations.
Memory management is important for speed, because of alignment issues. OS overhead, for task switching and other stuff matters. Disk access, caching and so on are important. How the OS's handle virtual memory can be important.
But the trials did not have enough samples to fully explore the situation anyway.
rbb
Re:So it's OK it a suqat on uninhabited land, too?
on
Make Way for Fiber
·
· Score: 1
Ever fly anywhere? There is just SHITLOADS of uninhabited land. In fact there's more uninhabited land than developed land. So WHAT'S THE PROBLEM if I just drive 100 miles out into the desert and put up a fence and build a home there? I can't believe how selfish the gov't and the BLM are. The Federal Government owns 90% of my home state of Nevada? Now THAT'S selfish.
And the indians owned 100% of it before the feds
did.
rbb
How would you rate bugs like 'Misspelled company name'? I've seen plenty of bugs like that. They have no effect on how the program runs, but no way would you actually ship with them.
Or the "If we don't ship by x-mas, we go out of business, so we can let a crashing bug go in, because it only happens in rare cases"
The other problem with rankings is that anything 4 or 5 never ever gets fixed, so noone puts anything there. Then the real ratings are 1-3. Instant rating inflation.
"We only fix 1's and 2's" - and suprise, people only enter in 1's or 2's.
First, I would mention that Stanislaw Lem had stories satirizing the West, as well as the East. You can't characterize it as solely anti-Soviet.
Second, is Gravity's Rainbow SF? That's the first I've heard of it. My wife, who has been trying to read it for about six months, says that it could be considered SF, but then you would also include Catch-22 and all sorts of W.S. Burrows as SF.
Well, and that shows that the new wave SF was not totally dead. Perhaps you are forgetting the Phillip Jose Farmer's, or David Bryn's of the genre. While they employ 'Space Opera' at times, they also try to introduce radical new ideas, and don't show the world as a right wing capitalist paradise either.
(Should I mention Ursala LeGuin? And more?)
Oy, the M.I. Complex -Made- Rendesvous with Rama beat Gravity's Rainbow? Now that's Science Fiction.)
Uh, I think since 1980, the price of gold has plummeted from almost $700 an ounce to under $300 an ounce. Adding in inflation, it seems like gold as 'faith-based currency' is on the wane.
http://www.kitco.com/charts/historicalgold.html
For me, real estate is worth more than gold.
I can live in my house, and once it's paid off completly, retire in it. Try doing that with ten pounds of gold!
I believe the "duress" noted was related to the very short time period involved. Being asked to read and understand an employment contract in one day, without a chance to consult a lawyer may be unreasonable duress.
I was in a similar situation when a company I worked for was bought out by Quark, (Notoriously bad company to work for, btw.) who came in an demanded we sign an employment contract that day.
The most appalling part that contract is that there was a clause saying 'I agree that I have had adequate time to consider the contract'!! (4 hours, yeah right.) We all thought that was bunk, so ignored their deadline, consulted attornies and such. And signed later after due consideration.
While there is probably no specific time frame, if my employer told me to sign a contract in the next 10 minutes or I would be fired, I would conider that duress, and hope that it would be voidable in court. Even a day for a major change is pretty short, especially since the company would have spent much more time creating it.
rbb
p.s. If a company violates a Criminal Law, who gets sent to Jail? Does a company have 1st amendment rights, or does it only apply to real people? If a company kills someone, can we give the company the Death Penalty?
Actually, the law DOES require that public accomadations be offered with no prejudice. When renting your house, you cannot exclude Jews, for example. Or unmarried couples, even if it violates your own religon. Private clubs, private schools, are completely different.
Sending someone away because you don't like them
is completely different, unless you don't like
them because of their race. You can send someone away because they have no shoes on, unless they have no feet. (ie Handicaped.)
Why? Because we, as a society, have decided that some group rights trump some individual rights. If the sign on your door says 'Open', then you are committed to backing that up.
rbb
>The law does not guarantee an African American
>the right to sit in a bar full of rednecks and
>Confederate flags. It may, depending on a
>number of factors, but there is nothing in the
>law that forces some guy who runs some tiny
>little bar in Gnaw Bone, Alabama to serve anyone
>he doesn't want to serve. Rights are interesting
>things. These days nearly everything is granted
>the status of a right. It isn't a word to be
>toyed with, rights are very important and by
>attempting to ascribe their characteristics to
>trivial needs we slowly erode their importance.
>Rights don't require an imposition on someone
>else. No one should have to give you anything to
>fulfill any of your rights. Our hypothetical
>bartender could easily ask about his right to not
>serve someone.
Hmm. I might have seen a different NY/NY vs LV game, but the one I saw had lousy tackling, and generally seemed boring.
Also, it seemed the players seemed unprepared and uncomfortable being interviewed during the game. Sure, I wouldn't do any better. But it did seem funny.
One running back was so out of breath while being interviewed all he could do was pant.
All in all, it reminded me of college football. If you want more football by guys who love playing it after the season is over, buy a football!
Rough IVF Facts:
They retrieve 6-15 eggs from the donor.
About half of those are successfully fertilized.
Many of those that get fertilized stop dividing at 4 cells or so, and others show visible abnormalities, and would miscarry if implanted.
Each implanted embryo has roughly a 30% chance of surviving to term, so most doctors implant 2 or 3 of them to give ~60% chance of a child.
What's the moral point? At present, much more is known about the effects of IVF versus Cloning. Once implanted, IVF foetuses are just like 'old fashioned' ones.
Experimenting on humans, (And very desperate ones too.) is immoral.
Charging someone $50K to be a lab rat reserves a special brimstone pool for you.
Plus biologically, genetic variety is better for the whole species.
I missed the privacy of the old voting cards, where no one could glance at your form and see your vote.
This can be fixed tho, and I really like the idea of avoiding invalid ballots. If all votes in the ballot are valid, it would make any after the fact tampering much more obvious.
This election is being decided by less than.004% of the voters! 99.9% accuraccy is far too sloppy! (based on ~ 6,000,000 votes, and a delta of 225 votes.)
The spoiled presidential votes in ONE COUNTY alone were ~19,000, which is only %99.68 accurate, out of 6 million. If strlen failed 3 out of 1000 calls, you'd be damn pissed!
Actually, the randomness of Pi is one of the things they are researching. We don't know if all digits are equally represented (If I recall correctly).
It's fully possible for an irrational number to have only 1's and 0's in it's BASE 10 representation.
Also, two bit streams having the same checksum does NOT imply they contain the same data.
But, I digress.
rbb
With an actual degree in Math!
>An extra Gig or 2 isn't going to speed up the compile when you have 4,000 files and a few million lines of code.
Well, the link is usually very memory intensive. Having enough memory to cache all common header files makes a big difference. But the difference between one Gig & two? Probably close to zero. rbb
Actually, I believe the solar panals also had thermal problems. The original panels would expand and contract as the Hubble passed in and out of the Earth's shadow.
Slashdot Mirror
Jeeze, it's not so bad. In upper division and graduate math classes, they have you write proofs in exams.
You have to
1) Remember definitions.
2) String statements together in logical, consistent groups.
3) Reach the proper conclusion with the hypotheses given.
4) Justify interesting or tricky steps.
Sounds a lot like creating code in an exam situation. A reasonable professor (or TA more likely) will read the code/proof looking for the the correct ideas and flow more than perfect pedantic correctness. At least that's what I did when I graded for upper division classes.
rbb
ps - use scratch paper to avoid erasing.
Well, except that the whole hundreds digit rule breaks down completely in the SF Bay Area. 280 is not a bypass - and never actually intersects 80. 880 intersects 80, and 280, but the long way around. It was renamed to 880 to get Federal Funding.
580 is a To, I suppose, but 980 is a bypass. (Goes from 880 to 580!) Don't ask me to classify what 480 was before it was removed, or 680 either, and I think 780 is around somewhere, and 380 sits pretty at 1 mile long.
See the excellent interstate site
http://www.kurumi.com/roads/3di/3di-table.html
The 'law' of supply and demand gets broken when the providers of the supply collude, and agree on pricing.
This is why there are anti-trust laws. The fact that CDs are as expensive as DVDs is a symptom of the record companies illegal control of the industry.
rbb
(Please insert 'alleged' above wherever needed.)
On this, you are wrong.
It's all about context. 'Nigger' was used by whites as a derogatory term, used in a racist way for decades. A white man saying it has a hard time escaping the context. Not so when a black man says it.
Just like context matters in sex discrimination. Telling an off color joke to you female co-worker you have known for 5 years is very different from telling a new employee who you manage the very same joke. It's about trust, understanding, and power.
Call a cracker a hacker - you are modded to -1!
rbb
>Now. As a sidenote.
>
>Black man says nigger - it's culture.
>White man says nigger - it's racist.
>Italian man says wop - it's culture.
>Asian man says wop - it's racist.
>Indian man says chink - it's racist.
>Asian man says chink - it's culture.
If you read the Reuters article carefully, it does not say a digital -> digital compression of 1:100, but implies a better way of encoding / compressing digital -> analog -> digital, with the analog bandwidth being much greater than today.
Thats all the stuff where they talk about Dr. Claude Shannon and information theory. (They could have been clearer about it, but that's PR flacks for you.)
examine the quote
'"What we've developed is a new plateau in communications theory," St. George said. "We are expecting to produce the enormous capacity of analog signaling, with the benefit of the noise-free integrity of digital communications."'
Sounds like they are trying to shove more data into an analog stream, using wacky math, than would normally be allowed.
rbb
Excuse me, but who in this world, except lawyers, has the knowledge to read and understand all those liscenses and terms. (And they probably don't have the time.)
These type of things are written to be obscure, misleading, and innocuous sounding. On top of that, the mass market consumer has very little negotiating power over these things. This differs greatly from 'real' contracts, like employment contracts and home mortgages.
I damned well took the time & energy to read and understand all those things when I bought my house, and feel good about it. Doing the same for every piece of software or service I purchase would be a waste of my finite lifetime.
Soooooo, what's the answer? There are laws regulating all types of contracts. These laws often include consumer rights that cannot be disclaimed or negotiated away. Laws that protect little old ladies from usury and such. Lobby the Gov to make similar laws for privacy.
AND post to slashdot or other populist web sites to educate the public about how bad these things are.
rbb
>There are also people who insist that they are better lovers while drunk or high.
Gee, get a grip! It can be a wonderful variation to screw while high, tipsy, or whatever.
Some people even enjoy listening to music while screwing! And if you say that's unprofessional, quit using a prostitute.
MK
I'm sure 98% of the anti-nuke activists are not nuclear physicists. (sp?) And many are more phobic than rational about the whole subject, true.
Part of the problem as you suspect is the media, and the sound-bite culture. If you have to take more than 60 seconds to explain your position, they show someone else.
So, let me explan my problems with Fission Power.
1) Govt & industry have been irresponsible, and I don't trust them. Dumping nuke waste just off the SF Bay, near the Farallon islands, in prime fishing areas, and covering it up, hiding the records, etc.
2) Chernoble (sp). Sure, US plants are better, but see #1, and I don't like the tiny risk of poisoning large tracts of land.
3) Subsidies. When the plants pay their own storage costs, insurance, and all, not having it paid for by taxpayers, I'll listen. But note #1. I would not trust industry studies much.
4) Weapon proliferation. The more Plutonium and U235 there is, the harder it is to control it all.
Those are my reasons.
rbb
The second amendment never allowed citizens to own whatever weapon they wanted, with no restrictions whatsoever. Most felons are not allowed to own guns. Violation of the 2nd, or keeping people safe?
Nukes, howitizers, and land mines, all outlawed for the common man!!!!! My rights are being trampled on. When I play my stereo at full volume at 2 am, my neighbors call the cops, who make me turn it down! Abuse!
Sarcasm aside, DMCA is a bad law, but the 2nd amendment won't help you one bit.
rbb
Rather than quibble about the precise wording, think about the SPIRIT of the 1st amendment.
If it says CONGRESS shall make no law, does that mean the Pres can use his powers to stop free speech? Or that state legislators can?
No. Free speech protection applies to all government bodies. (Just don't expect to stay in the Army long after you say you hate the USA tho.)
rbb
Since SETI is most likely purely CPU intensive, there is very little the OS can do to make it faster or slower (apart from deliberately getting in the way, of course). On the other hand, the compiler makes a tremendous difference, and so do the compilation options. Since we do not know which compiler was involved, and which options it was given, the benchmark is fairly useless.
Actually, the OS's can make a difference in performance, even with the same calculations.
Memory management is important for speed, because of alignment issues. OS overhead, for task switching and other stuff matters. Disk access, caching and so on are important. How the OS's handle virtual memory can be important.
But the trials did not have enough samples to fully explore the situation anyway. rbb
Ever fly anywhere? There is just SHITLOADS of uninhabited land. In fact there's more uninhabited land than developed land. So WHAT'S THE PROBLEM if I just drive 100 miles out into the desert and put up a fence and build a home there? I can't believe how selfish the gov't and the BLM are. The Federal Government owns 90% of my home state of Nevada? Now THAT'S selfish.
And the indians owned 100% of it before the feds did.
rbb
How would you rate bugs like 'Misspelled company name'? I've seen plenty of bugs like that. They have no effect on how the program runs, but no way would you actually ship with them.
Or the "If we don't ship by x-mas, we go out of business, so we can let a crashing bug go in, because it only happens in rare cases"
The other problem with rankings is that anything 4 or 5 never ever gets fixed, so noone puts anything there. Then the real ratings are 1-3. Instant rating inflation.
"We only fix 1's and 2's" - and suprise, people only enter in 1's or 2's.
rbb
First, I would mention that Stanislaw Lem had stories satirizing the West, as well as the East. You can't characterize it as solely anti-Soviet.
Second, is Gravity's Rainbow SF? That's the first I've heard of it. My wife, who has been trying to read it for about six months, says that it could be considered SF, but then you would also include Catch-22 and all sorts of W.S. Burrows as SF.
Well, and that shows that the new wave SF was not totally dead. Perhaps you are forgetting the Phillip Jose Farmer's, or David Bryn's of the genre. While they employ 'Space Opera' at times, they also try to introduce radical new ideas, and don't show the world as a right wing capitalist paradise either.
(Should I mention Ursala LeGuin? And more?)
Oy, the M.I. Complex -Made- Rendesvous with Rama beat Gravity's Rainbow? Now that's Science Fiction.)
rbb
>Gold has /never/ gone out of fashion.
Uh, I think since 1980, the price of gold has plummeted from almost $700 an ounce to under $300 an ounce. Adding in inflation, it seems like gold as 'faith-based currency' is on the wane.
http://www.kitco.com/charts/historicalgold.html
For me, real estate is worth more than gold.
I can live in my house, and once it's paid off completly, retire in it. Try doing that with ten pounds of gold!
rbb
Uh, non-government places can't threaten you with perjury. They could fire you, sue your ass, but perjury no way.
rbb
>Yo, dickhead, you generally sign the employment application, and state that it's true under penalty of perjury.
I believe the "duress" noted was related to the very short time period involved. Being asked to read and understand an employment contract in one day, without a chance to consult a lawyer may be unreasonable duress.
I was in a similar situation when a company I worked for was bought out by Quark, (Notoriously bad company to work for, btw.) who came in an demanded we sign an employment contract that day.
The most appalling part that contract is that there was a clause saying 'I agree that I have had adequate time to consider the contract'!! (4 hours, yeah right.) We all thought that was bunk, so ignored their deadline, consulted attornies and such. And signed later after due consideration.
While there is probably no specific time frame, if my employer told me to sign a contract in the next 10 minutes or I would be fired, I would conider that duress, and hope that it would be voidable in court. Even a day for a major change is pretty short, especially since the company would have spent much more time creating it.
rbb
p.s. If a company violates a Criminal Law, who gets sent to Jail? Does a company have 1st amendment rights, or does it only apply to real people? If a company kills someone, can we give the company the Death Penalty?
Actually, the law DOES require that public accomadations be offered with no prejudice. When renting your house, you cannot exclude Jews, for example. Or unmarried couples, even if it violates your own religon. Private clubs, private schools, are completely different.
Sending someone away because you don't like them
is completely different, unless you don't like
them because of their race. You can send someone away because they have no shoes on, unless they have no feet. (ie Handicaped.)
Why? Because we, as a society, have decided that some group rights trump some individual rights. If the sign on your door says 'Open', then you are committed to backing that up.
rbb
>The law does not guarantee an African American
>the right to sit in a bar full of rednecks and
>Confederate flags. It may, depending on a
>number of factors, but there is nothing in the
>law that forces some guy who runs some tiny
>little bar in Gnaw Bone, Alabama to serve anyone
>he doesn't want to serve. Rights are interesting
>things. These days nearly everything is granted
>the status of a right. It isn't a word to be
>toyed with, rights are very important and by
>attempting to ascribe their characteristics to
>trivial needs we slowly erode their importance.
>Rights don't require an imposition on someone
>else. No one should have to give you anything to
>fulfill any of your rights. Our hypothetical
>bartender could easily ask about his right to not
>serve someone.
Hmm. I might have seen a different NY/NY vs LV game, but the one I saw had lousy tackling, and generally seemed boring.
Also, it seemed the players seemed unprepared and uncomfortable being interviewed during the game. Sure, I wouldn't do any better. But it did seem funny.
One running back was so out of breath while being interviewed all he could do was pant.
All in all, it reminded me of college football. If you want more football by guys who love playing it after the season is over, buy a football!
rbb
Rough IVF Facts:
They retrieve 6-15 eggs from the donor.
About half of those are successfully fertilized.
Many of those that get fertilized stop dividing at 4 cells or so, and others show visible abnormalities, and would miscarry if implanted.
Each implanted embryo has roughly a 30% chance of surviving to term, so most doctors implant 2 or 3 of them to give ~60% chance of a child.
What's the moral point? At present, much more is known about the effects of IVF versus Cloning. Once implanted, IVF foetuses are just like 'old fashioned' ones.
Experimenting on humans, (And very desperate ones too.) is immoral.
Charging someone $50K to be a lab rat reserves a special brimstone pool for you.
Plus biologically, genetic variety is better for the whole species.
rbb
I missed the privacy of the old voting cards, where no one could glance at your form and see your vote.
.004% of the voters! 99.9% accuraccy is far too sloppy! (based on ~ 6,000,000 votes, and a delta of 225 votes.)
This can be fixed tho, and I really like the idea of avoiding invalid ballots. If all votes in the ballot are valid, it would make any after the fact tampering much more obvious.
This election is being decided by less than
The spoiled presidential votes in ONE COUNTY alone were ~19,000, which is only %99.68 accurate, out of 6 million. If strlen failed 3 out of 1000 calls, you'd be damn pissed!
rbb
Actually, the randomness of Pi is one of the things they are researching. We don't know if all digits are equally represented (If I recall correctly).
It's fully possible for an irrational number to have only 1's and 0's in it's BASE 10 representation.
Also, two bit streams having the same checksum does NOT imply they contain the same data.
But, I digress.
rbb
With an actual degree in Math!
Maybe we should all put a URL in the abstract so that anyone browsing the thesis can directly bypass them.
That will show them.
rbb
>Compiling is CPU bound, not I/O bound.
>An extra Gig or 2 isn't going to speed up the compile when you have 4,000 files and a few million lines of code.
Well, the link is usually very memory intensive. Having enough memory to cache all common header files makes a big difference.
But the difference between one Gig & two? Probably close to zero.
rbb
Actually, I believe the solar panals also had thermal problems. The original panels would expand and contract as the Hubble passed in and out of the Earth's shadow.
What amazes me is that it works at all.
rbb