I recall Technetium being radioactive, and therefore unstable.
The link also mentions:
...All the isotopes of technetium are radioactive. It is one of two elements with Z < 83 that have no stable isotopes; the other element is promethium (Z = 61).
1. Of the two, only Marie Curie died from causes of radiation exposure. Pierre got run over by a vehicle, but would have probably met the same fate.
2. Clarence Dally was Thomas Edison's assistance with Xrays. Here's a link.
Some crazy friend I know says that patents are good because they provide a reason to disclose new ideas. Then other people can learn from the new idea and create bigger/better ideas.
Here's an example: a construction company that patents building residential houses that have a "business area" within the home. The invention is the incorporation of another type of room within the structure to serve business uses (whatever that means).
So this one small construction company gets the business-model patent. Until the patent expires, this one business has a monopoly on building houses with a certain room. It doesn't matter that they can only construct one home at a time and are geographically isolated - no one else can build a house with a similar feature.
The USPTO is giving out market monopolies by awarding business patents. That crazy friend I mentioned earlier also told me that the US government doesn't like monopolies. Like I said, that friend is crazy.
1. Realism. No, sorry, there's nothing realistic about taking a shot every second with your scoped Mosin-Nagant or Springfield. They're bolt-action rifles and need to manually load the next bullet, meaning losing sight of the target.
Having target practiced with bolt-action rifles, I can tell you that you CAN keep the target within sight while reloading. It takes practice/conditioning and is only difficult/impractical when standing. Also, I cannot do this with accuracy at a rate of once per second - maybe 1 per 5 seconds (with the weight of the rifle supported by something other than me).
The guns also aren't one-shot kills.
I don't know the stats, but I'm assuming that if the game is to be realistic, one shot to the head should do it. Also, (to maintain realism) since the sniper: 1. is relatively stationary; 2. uses the least quantity of ammo; 3. engages targets that are very long range.... the ammunition tends to be the heaviest and most powerful. One shot from a sniper rifle SHOULD hurt a lot more than one shot from a peashooter.
[sarcasm] Last of all, if you want realism - try looking for [+20 health] containers while on your typical walk around your house. They're right next to the armor fragments, usually in corners. [/sarcasm]
Sorry, their arguement sounds like the gamers who can adjust. It's like the kid who hates chess because he doesn't know how to use the knight effectively.
Here's a little something I encountered a few months back. Just for comparison: my post, and the response. It's the same joke, but only one gets moderated funny (+5 at that).
I wasn't surprised, though since I understand that lots of people here are pro-*NIX. For me, there's the bias.
Also, I wouldn't have been surprised if my post was modded DOWN as offtopic (since it's not *NIX)!
Unlike that door handle they most likely touched while coming into the building?
.. or the door handle when exiting the bathroom.
A lot of good it does to "require all employees to wash their hands", when they're just going to handle one of the most commonly touched surfaces soon after.
Abstention (or not casting a vote) is a valid use of the system. In this case, you can't see when a voter abstained, and therefore cannot determine the "voter's intent".
Here's your counterexample, from http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs2-wire.htm
That works, at least for my question of passive/active usage of a band. This thread has gotten off-topic.
I'd think that the usage of data transmitted through cable service is probably limited by contract and that would have the answer to all questions regarding descramblers/filters/etc.
Another one of the rules says that certain wavelengths of the RF spectrum belong to (or are for the exclusive use of) certain governmental organisations (eg, the US armed forces, police departments) or private corporations (eg, DirecTV). In the former case, these wavelengths are used without compensation, but in the latter case, the corporations concerned are paying for the right to exclusive use of those frequencies.
There's a difference between passive and active use of a spectrum. You get in trouble for broadcasting/interfering over restricted bands, but not for just listening to it... unless you can provide a counter-example.
However, EULAs in general are NOT illegal, for the simple matter that they wouldn't FIT on the outside of the box.
I disagree. They could outline the do's/don'ts on the box cover without the extended legalese.
The first couple paragraphs are always a description of the EULA - remove that. Do you see a definition of copyright law when you buy a book? No, you just see the word "Copyright", a date, and what rights are reserved.
The next few paragraphs define the parties/products involved as ALLCAPS words. These are all repeated extensively in paragraph form. If everything pertaining to the EULA is listed by party (as in a chart), the party's name appears once and there are no repeats.
Also, by keeping everything in paragraph form, you cannot easily compare the value provided by one EULA vs another. Think along the lines of the "Nutrition Facts" table found on the box cover of processed food. There's a reason the food label is standard - to force the manufacturer to fess up about the nutritional value of their product, while making it easy to compare two similar products.
Somewhere along the way, the EULA will breakup the rules according to the product subdivisions. This means that some of the EULA will not apply to you. The more product varieties, the less applies to you. For example, did you get the professional, academic, personal or demo version? One standard EULA (with a section describing each EULA nuance) accompanies all versions. Having one EULA per product makes for a few paragraphs less of text.
It think that the EULA can follow a standard chart and therefore fit on the box cover. However, it won't happen because it's easier to hide crazy stuff in paragraph text than a standardized chart.
I'm probably wrong since IANAL, the idea just dawned on me, and I haven't had my afternoon caffeine fix.
On Monday I saw that Fox 5 was running a story on:: brace yourself:: Duke Nukem 3D!
I was laughing for about a minute when I saw the clips in the commercial previewing their 'news'.
Since when is EIGHT YEARS OLD considered new?
Also, if you look at the advisory label (about 2 screens down), it's rated 1 of 4 for "Nudity/Sex", an issue that Fox5 was pursuing (at least in the commercial I saw). At least use an example that's 2 or higher. Then again, the commercial wouldn't have been as funny.
I see a lot of "look, a box! I must fill it with information.
I don't know why, but my first year of computer use, when a program would produce a little temporary 'cancel' box while busy, I could not keep myself from moving the mouse over it. I noticed that my friends were unconciously doing this too. Something inside compelled all of us to do it.
And then, since the mouse was directly over the cancel button, I sometimes would accidentally/involuntarily click the mouse thereby cancelling the process which would really piss me off. It took a while to recondition myself.
Biggest PC annoyance...
on
PC Annoyances
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Is watching someone else use a computer!
Example comments:
You know, you don't have to double-click the webpage link...
You could just type the web address in the white box at the top instead of using a search engine...
Damn it! No! Just... Forget it, let me do it.
Man, I had no idea that was so funny...
It is funny. Or at least, I'd rather laugh than cry. (note: I'm trying to be funny here).
But now I have at least one clue: both factors were of equal length, and were both half the length of the full number
The length of a product is equal to the sum of the lengths of it's factors (1/3 of the time it's less one). That part shouldn't be a surprise. Of the 45 different single digit multiplications (I'm excluding the use of 0), 30 produce a double digit product. 1*anything results in a single digit product, 2*2,3,4 also and 3*3. The sum_of_lengths idea for multiplication applies to all bases, not just decimal.
When I read their faq, I got the impression that the factors will be approximately of equal length (when read in binary). They also want to make it 'impossible' to crack it brute-force using a prime number list. If one factor is much smaller, then it'll be less effort using the bottom-up approach we all used in 3rd grade (x/2, x/3, x/5, x/7, etc).
I put a lot of time into the project so I won't just give it all away (see *NOTE* below). But I'll provide a couple ideas:
1. The two factors are prime. Being that both are odd values, their average will always be a whole number.
2. The average is always greater-than or equal-to the square-root of the product.
Now look up Fermat's method. It's the basis for most/all factoring algos. Here's a link. I don't necessarily like the way they describe it (there are easier ways), but it's a hint - just like you asked.
I regularly get new ideas on how to improve my approach, but each one shaves (on average) half the time. Half of ~10^74 years is still ~10^74 years. I am only using one computer, so that's one hinderence...
Here's another hint: don't use bottom-up as your main approach, it's a bigger waste of time than 10^74 years since you're guaranteed that the lower value is not small. Recall that RSA implements the use of two LARGE factors. 'Large' is definitely subjective but is relative to the given value.
I looked at your journal. The hints above help provide ways to skip large sections. 'Large' is again subjective.
Since I mentioned the journal, sorry - I'm not a fan of Descent. I just couldn't get used to the controls and navigating upside-down/sideways and so forth.
I'm sorry if this disappoints you, but I'm sure there's some quick and dirty way to find the answer without brute force. My opinion is that you just have to REALLY think different (like rejecting division or something just as radical), since no one's done better with the tools available. A historical analogy would be something like the introduction of polar coordinates or logarithmic scales - departures from conventional techniques to simplify a particular difficulty.
... hmmm....
NOTE: I need to feel that it's actually worth something even though it's probably not.
I know what you mean. A couple weeks ago I realized that my attempts wouldn't solve the problem fast enough. Looking at the answer, I figure it would've taken me ~10^74 years to get it on my own.
But on that note, there's no mention of how long it took them and how many computers were used.
I'm relieved that I semi gave up before learning of this news. Oh well, at least I learned a great deal in the process.
Almost at the end of the article it says:
"The more customers catch the errors and push back, the more it will cost the service companies to handle them - and the more likely such problems will be prevented."
If it costs more to handle this problem, then the obvious solution would be to add to the administrative fee to all customers since they all potentially benefit from it.
The error-catching is a service! And services aren't free, you know...
Although command confirmation will not prevent the truely clueless from doing who-knows-what, it would prevent the more savvy amoung us from making such mistakes.
Advantage - Less accidents. In an email program, training yourself to not click on a suspicious link/attachment is helpful. However, that link occupies a given area of your desktop and has the opportunity to be clicked. Adding a step to confirm such a click would give you a second chance.
Disadvantage - You have one more step in performing a given procedure.
I'm going even more off-topic here, but this is also benefitial to code writing as well. Buffer overflows are the main exploit used by viruses. One more step to confirm a string length would eliminate this type of threat. Of course, that one step may need to be repeated a lot, which would 'waste' processing time and slow things down. Although I've never used it, OpenBSD is running with this idea.
Thanks for finding a gentler way to illustrate the faults in his arguments. Unfortunately, I got a little carried away and stooped to his level, probably offending more people in the process.
Slashdot Mirror
The Paradox of the Lie:
"This statement is false."
A textbook problem for philosophy, and it doesn't get dismissed as bogus by the pros.
I recall Technetium being radioactive, and therefore unstable.
...All the isotopes of technetium are radioactive. It is one of two elements with Z < 83 that have no stable isotopes; the other element is promethium (Z = 61).
The link also mentions:
1. Of the two, only Marie Curie died from causes of radiation exposure. Pierre got run over by a vehicle, but would have probably met the same fate.
2. Clarence Dally was Thomas Edison's assistance with Xrays. Here's a link.
patenting business processes is really bad.
Some crazy friend I know says that patents are good because they provide a reason to disclose new ideas. Then other people can learn from the new idea and create bigger/better ideas.
Here's an example: a construction company that patents building residential houses that have a "business area" within the home. The invention is the incorporation of another type of room within the structure to serve business uses (whatever that means).
So this one small construction company gets the business-model patent. Until the patent expires, this one business has a monopoly on building houses with a certain room. It doesn't matter that they can only construct one home at a time and are geographically isolated - no one else can build a house with a similar feature.
The USPTO is giving out market monopolies by awarding business patents. That crazy friend I mentioned earlier also told me that the US government doesn't like monopolies. Like I said, that friend is crazy.
1. Realism. No, sorry, there's nothing realistic about taking a shot every second with your scoped Mosin-Nagant or Springfield. They're bolt-action rifles and need to manually load the next bullet, meaning losing sight of the target.
.... the ammunition tends to be the heaviest and most powerful. One shot from a sniper rifle SHOULD hurt a lot more than one shot from a peashooter.
Having target practiced with bolt-action rifles, I can tell you that you CAN keep the target within sight while reloading. It takes practice/conditioning and is only difficult/impractical when standing. Also, I cannot do this with accuracy at a rate of once per second - maybe 1 per 5 seconds (with the weight of the rifle supported by something other than me).
The guns also aren't one-shot kills.
I don't know the stats, but I'm assuming that if the game is to be realistic, one shot to the head should do it. Also, (to maintain realism) since the sniper: 1. is relatively stationary; 2. uses the least quantity of ammo; 3. engages targets that are very long range
[sarcasm] Last of all, if you want realism - try looking for [+20 health] containers while on your typical walk around your house. They're right next to the armor fragments, usually in corners. [/sarcasm]
Sorry, their arguement sounds like the gamers who can adjust. It's like the kid who hates chess because he doesn't know how to use the knight effectively.
It's deeper.
Here's a little something I encountered a few months back. Just for comparison: my post, and the response. It's the same joke, but only one gets moderated funny (+5 at that).
I wasn't surprised, though since I understand that lots of people here are pro-*NIX. For me, there's the bias.
Also, I wouldn't have been surprised if my post was modded DOWN as offtopic (since it's not *NIX)!
Unlike that door handle they most likely touched while coming into the building?
.. or the door handle when exiting the bathroom.
A lot of good it does to "require all employees to wash their hands", when they're just going to handle one of the most commonly touched surfaces soon after.
Abstention (or not casting a vote) is a valid use of the system. In this case, you can't see when a voter abstained, and therefore cannot determine the "voter's intent".
See here.
Here's your counterexample, from http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs2-wire.htm
That works, at least for my question of passive/active usage of a band. This thread has gotten off-topic.
I'd think that the usage of data transmitted through cable service is probably limited by contract and that would have the answer to all questions regarding descramblers/filters/etc.
Another one of the rules says that certain wavelengths of the RF spectrum belong to (or are for the exclusive use of) certain governmental organisations (eg, the US armed forces, police departments) or private corporations (eg, DirecTV). In the former case, these wavelengths are used without compensation, but in the latter case, the corporations concerned are paying for the right to exclusive use of those frequencies.
... unless you can provide a counter-example.
There's a difference between passive and active use of a spectrum. You get in trouble for broadcasting/interfering over restricted bands, but not for just listening to it
However, EULAs in general are NOT illegal, for the simple matter that they wouldn't FIT on the outside of the box.
I disagree. They could outline the do's/don'ts on the box cover without the extended legalese.
The first couple paragraphs are always a description of the EULA - remove that. Do you see a definition of copyright law when you buy a book? No, you just see the word "Copyright", a date, and what rights are reserved.
The next few paragraphs define the parties/products involved as ALLCAPS words. These are all repeated extensively in paragraph form. If everything pertaining to the EULA is listed by party (as in a chart), the party's name appears once and there are no repeats.
Also, by keeping everything in paragraph form, you cannot easily compare the value provided by one EULA vs another. Think along the lines of the "Nutrition Facts" table found on the box cover of processed food. There's a reason the food label is standard - to force the manufacturer to fess up about the nutritional value of their product, while making it easy to compare two similar products.
Somewhere along the way, the EULA will breakup the rules according to the product subdivisions. This means that some of the EULA will not apply to you. The more product varieties, the less applies to you. For example, did you get the professional, academic, personal or demo version? One standard EULA (with a section describing each EULA nuance) accompanies all versions. Having one EULA per product makes for a few paragraphs less of text.
It think that the EULA can follow a standard chart and therefore fit on the box cover. However, it won't happen because it's easier to hide crazy stuff in paragraph text than a standardized chart.
I'm probably wrong since IANAL, the idea just dawned on me, and I haven't had my afternoon caffeine fix.
Or what about those games that depict World War II? Should the Germans or the Russians be pissed?
When I was looking up info on DukeNukem3D for a post, I noticed this nifty litte blurb for "Wolfenstein 3D":
Due to the game content, this game may not be ordered by residents of Germany.
I'm not going to look for other examples, but if they can't purchase the game...
On Monday I saw that Fox 5 was running a story on :: brace yourself :: Duke Nukem 3D!
I was laughing for about a minute when I saw the clips in the commercial previewing their 'news'.
Since when is EIGHT YEARS OLD considered new?
Also, if you look at the advisory label (about 2 screens down), it's rated 1 of 4 for "Nudity/Sex", an issue that Fox5 was pursuing (at least in the commercial I saw). At least use an example that's 2 or higher. Then again, the commercial wouldn't have been as funny.
I was talking about RSA-576. That's how I could estimate the time-to-answer.
I'd still like to know the amount of resources and time expended for their project. Knowing that info would tell me how my solo attempt compares.
Also, you just know that they're working on the next ones too.
I see a lot of "look, a box! I must fill it with information.
I don't know why, but my first year of computer use, when a program would produce a little temporary 'cancel' box while busy, I could not keep myself from moving the mouse over it. I noticed that my friends were unconciously doing this too. Something inside compelled all of us to do it.
And then, since the mouse was directly over the cancel button, I sometimes would accidentally/involuntarily click the mouse thereby cancelling the process which would really piss me off. It took a while to recondition myself.
Is watching someone else use a computer!
Example comments:
You know, you don't have to double-click the webpage link...
You could just type the web address in the white box at the top instead of using a search engine...
Damn it! No! Just... Forget it, let me do it.
All last night. There were a few more I'm sure.
Man, I had no idea that was so funny...
... hmmm ....
It is funny. Or at least, I'd rather laugh than cry. (note: I'm trying to be funny here).
But now I have at least one clue: both factors were of equal length, and were both half the length of the full number
The length of a product is equal to the sum of the lengths of it's factors (1/3 of the time it's less one). That part shouldn't be a surprise. Of the 45 different single digit multiplications (I'm excluding the use of 0), 30 produce a double digit product. 1*anything results in a single digit product, 2*2,3,4 also and 3*3. The sum_of_lengths idea for multiplication applies to all bases, not just decimal.
When I read their faq, I got the impression that the factors will be approximately of equal length (when read in binary). They also want to make it 'impossible' to crack it brute-force using a prime number list. If one factor is much smaller, then it'll be less effort using the bottom-up approach we all used in 3rd grade (x/2, x/3, x/5, x/7, etc).
I put a lot of time into the project so I won't just give it all away (see *NOTE* below). But I'll provide a couple ideas:
1. The two factors are prime. Being that both are odd values, their average will always be a whole number.
2. The average is always greater-than or equal-to the square-root of the product.
Now look up Fermat's method. It's the basis for most/all factoring algos. Here's a link. I don't necessarily like the way they describe it (there are easier ways), but it's a hint - just like you asked.
I regularly get new ideas on how to improve my approach, but each one shaves (on average) half the time. Half of ~10^74 years is still ~10^74 years. I am only using one computer, so that's one hinderence...
Here's another hint: don't use bottom-up as your main approach, it's a bigger waste of time than 10^74 years since you're guaranteed that the lower value is not small. Recall that RSA implements the use of two LARGE factors. 'Large' is definitely subjective but is relative to the given value.
I looked at your journal. The hints above help provide ways to skip large sections. 'Large' is again subjective.
Since I mentioned the journal, sorry - I'm not a fan of Descent. I just couldn't get used to the controls and navigating upside-down/sideways and so forth.
I'm sorry if this disappoints you, but I'm sure there's some quick and dirty way to find the answer without brute force. My opinion is that you just have to REALLY think different (like rejecting division or something just as radical), since no one's done better with the tools available. A historical analogy would be something like the introduction of polar coordinates or logarithmic scales - departures from conventional techniques to simplify a particular difficulty.
NOTE: I need to feel that it's actually worth something even though it's probably not.
I know what you mean. A couple weeks ago I realized that my attempts wouldn't solve the problem fast enough. Looking at the answer, I figure it would've taken me ~10^74 years to get it on my own.
But on that note, there's no mention of how long it took them and how many computers were used.
I'm relieved that I semi gave up before learning of this news. Oh well, at least I learned a great deal in the process.
Almost at the end of the article it says:
"The more customers catch the errors and push back, the more it will cost the service companies to handle them - and the more likely such problems will be prevented."
If it costs more to handle this problem, then the obvious solution would be to add to the administrative fee to all customers since they all potentially benefit from it.
The error-catching is a service! And services aren't free, you know...
Although command confirmation will not prevent the truely clueless from doing who-knows-what, it would prevent the more savvy amoung us from making such mistakes.
Advantage - Less accidents. In an email program, training yourself to not click on a suspicious link/attachment is helpful. However, that link occupies a given area of your desktop and has the opportunity to be clicked. Adding a step to confirm such a click would give you a second chance.
Disadvantage - You have one more step in performing a given procedure.
I'm going even more off-topic here, but this is also benefitial to code writing as well. Buffer overflows are the main exploit used by viruses. One more step to confirm a string length would eliminate this type of threat. Of course, that one step may need to be repeated a lot, which would 'waste' processing time and slow things down. Although I've never used it, OpenBSD is running with this idea.
Would it be OK to close the eyes and cover the ears? How about going out of the room for a pitstop or to fetch a glass of water?
Your answer is found here.
What is this, Subliminal Cowboy Reference Day on Slashdot?
They're making up for the lack of CowboyNeal options in recent polls.
Thanks for finding a gentler way to illustrate the faults in his arguments. Unfortunately, I got a little carried away and stooped to his level, probably offending more people in the process.
Apparently the RIAA claims to represent thousands of labels, many of whom have never joined the organization.
They need click on a link to Opt-out. Also, it takes 4-6 weeks to be removed from the list.