I've been riding fixed since before it was cool. They're great fun. Some people do it for image, or to prove that they're tough -- and there is some credit due, in hilly Seattle -- but I do it because I enjoy it.
Also, fixed-gear bikes are superior in some ways. They really suck in others. Mine is lighter than my geared bikes, and the mechanical efficiency is higher because the system is simpler -- so I can accelerate off the line a lot faster, making it preferable in stop-and-go traffic*. Every moving part is machined or cast out of a fairly large piece of steel -- no springs, no plastic, so it takes a lot less maintenance and replacement of fidgety bits. But... I can't put fenders on it, so it's a bummer in the rain. It sucks to go down steep hills (I've gone almost 60mph on my geared bike, and my knees would explode if I went over 40 on my fixed).
*pet peeve: I stop at lights and stop signs, and signal before I turn or change lanes. When I drive, I honk and yell at cyclists who blow through lights when I've got the right of way.
No, they go into more detail in the linked NYT article. You wouldn't have to turn over the private key, ever, not even if you got a court order. You'd be required to use it to decrypt future communication, though. But we've all seen how good corporations are at keeping their private keys private. If criminals run their own server out of their basement, there's not a lot the fed can do except a no-knock break-in.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out with TOR, since every TOR user is a "communications provider".
Well, the source is right there on the webpage. Why don't you download & compile it, and see for yourself? It's an alpha release so I'll guess that it's slower than it could be.
Also, Kurzweil is not the first person to make such a ridiculous claim. Wolfram makes a comparison in NKS -- claiming that Mathematica is more complex than the human genome based on a "lines of code" argument. I lol'd.
I got bad grades in math through high school, not for lack of decent teachers. But, the experience left me with the notion that I was bad at math. In reality, I was bad at doing homework. Almost ten years later, I went back to school and ended up in a precalculus class with an abysmal teacher. She made mistakes and got angry at people who corrected her, she insisted that she was right in the face of irrefutable evidence. So, I got angry and sought to prove her wrong. I relentlessly toiled over my homework, and came to learn the material well enough to fight her (and eventually report her behavior to the dean). This anger evoked a passion for rigor, and now, I'm working towards my PhD in math. So yeah, shitty teacher actually had a great effect on me. But to this day, I feel sorry for the rest of the students who were merely confused by what they saw.
lolwut? I sat down and implemented the plain change algorithm in a high level language in the course of about 20 minutes. The only difficulty was changing goto statements into proper looping structure (not that I personally have a problem with gotos, but the language doesn't support them). Also, that algorithm is on page 4 of fascicle 2b... your claim of "15 pages of Tex'ified math equations" is bullshit.
Oh bullshit. PDE's don't require grad level understanding. When I was an undergrad, I hacked up a simple first-order PDE solver (in PHP no less) for an extra credit problem I was doing at community college, and it did the job. It wasn't great, it wasn't robust or accurate or fast, but it was ridiculously easy to do. And I understood it fine. And I would have understood it fine as a high schooler, if I hadn't gotten kicked out of calculus.
Right. So one day out of every 28, supposing there is no cloud cover, you can spot a human at a kilometer. Note that a 2 meter tall person a kilometer appears to be 2 mm tall at 1 meter away. I'm slightly farsighted and my vision is very clear, and I believe that you could correctly identify a human at that distance by observing its gait -- if it was pointed out to you or you scanned the horizon very carefully, and you were not in a moving vehicle with a windshield in front of you. Moreover, what if there are fences, trees, mail boxes, parked cars, houses, etc. cluttering up the horizon? I call bullshit.
If you're driving on a clear night under a full moon on salt flats, yes, I'd bet you could see a human a kilometer away. Otherwise, you're full of it.
No, it's great. It'll increase the average work day (decrease the amount of time spent happy) by 2 hours per day in the third-world, making them more like us which is what everybody really wants.
People enjoy media that supports their world view. You like YouTube, Joe 40 voter likes COPS. You're no better (nor am I).
Also, your age-based dichotomy is obviously based in a lack of communicating with the elderly. My uncle tells a great story about my dad grabbing a cop by the shoulders and kicking him in the junk back in the 60's. To this day, my dad is still more anti-authoritarian as I am -- and I'm one of these 29 year-olds who watches YouTube footage of police abuse, reads Wikileaks, etc.
I drive stick in stop&go traffic all the time, and I've never understood this argument. Pedals make the car stop and go, auto or manual. Do you have trouble starting and stopping on hills or something?
The reasons to like stick are manifold, but one that's been growing on me recently is that in an automatic, my speed tends to creep up beyond the legal limit if I'm not ever-vigilant. That never happens when I drive stick, since I keep the motor running at a steady RPM without conscious effort.
Proved under what assumptions? Did they rule out every combination of gears, power inputs and outputs? I find neither "one guy tried it before" nor "somebody told me such was proved in a paper" persuasive arguments in light of a pretty persuasive explanation of how this works. My only regret is that I don't have my legos anymore -- I'd have a working model of this up within a few minutes, otherwise.
Man. I'm gonna start tin-foiling my nuts. Ultrasound emitters can be made compact enough to hide anywhere. It'd be trivial to hide them under ATM's, seats in public places, etc. This leads to all sorts of spooky eugenics conspiracy scenarios.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot faster than what?
As I said, my geared bike. And I've got a front brake, which I use in emergency situations, and going down steep hills.
I've been riding fixed since before it was cool. They're great fun. Some people do it for image, or to prove that they're tough -- and there is some credit due, in hilly Seattle -- but I do it because I enjoy it.
Also, fixed-gear bikes are superior in some ways. They really suck in others. Mine is lighter than my geared bikes, and the mechanical efficiency is higher because the system is simpler -- so I can accelerate off the line a lot faster, making it preferable in stop-and-go traffic*. Every moving part is machined or cast out of a fairly large piece of steel -- no springs, no plastic, so it takes a lot less maintenance and replacement of fidgety bits. But... I can't put fenders on it, so it's a bummer in the rain. It sucks to go down steep hills (I've gone almost 60mph on my geared bike, and my knees would explode if I went over 40 on my fixed).
*pet peeve: I stop at lights and stop signs, and signal before I turn or change lanes. When I drive, I honk and yell at cyclists who blow through lights when I've got the right of way.
It orbits a red dwarf star whose lifetime is in the billions of decades--20-30 billion years likely
The age of the universe is thought to be between 12 and 14 billion years old.
Well, GP *did* say "very very very old". That's a lot of very's. And I'd certainly count "twice the age of the universe" as "very very very old".
Wouldn't you?
Go back downstairs and get off my lawn!
In that order?
No, they go into more detail in the linked NYT article. You wouldn't have to turn over the private key, ever, not even if you got a court order. You'd be required to use it to decrypt future communication, though. But we've all seen how good corporations are at keeping their private keys private. If criminals run their own server out of their basement, there's not a lot the fed can do except a no-knock break-in.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out with TOR, since every TOR user is a "communications provider".
Well, the source is right there on the webpage. Why don't you download & compile it, and see for yourself? It's an alpha release so I'll guess that it's slower than it could be.
No, there is nothing weird about that evil feeling.
Also, Kurzweil is not the first person to make such a ridiculous claim. Wolfram makes a comparison in NKS -- claiming that Mathematica is more complex than the human genome based on a "lines of code" argument. I lol'd.
Right. So he'll send a lawyer, who will pwn your ass for filing a frivolous lawsuit. Drop in the bucket for Gates, and you'll be filing bankruptcy.
Did you rtfa? The government loves child porn!
I got bad grades in math through high school, not for lack of decent teachers. But, the experience left me with the notion that I was bad at math. In reality, I was bad at doing homework. Almost ten years later, I went back to school and ended up in a precalculus class with an abysmal teacher. She made mistakes and got angry at people who corrected her, she insisted that she was right in the face of irrefutable evidence. So, I got angry and sought to prove her wrong. I relentlessly toiled over my homework, and came to learn the material well enough to fight her (and eventually report her behavior to the dean). This anger evoked a passion for rigor, and now, I'm working towards my PhD in math. So yeah, shitty teacher actually had a great effect on me. But to this day, I feel sorry for the rest of the students who were merely confused by what they saw.
iPhone to ship with TeX?
lolwut? I sat down and implemented the plain change algorithm in a high level language in the course of about 20 minutes. The only difficulty was changing goto statements into proper looping structure (not that I personally have a problem with gotos, but the language doesn't support them). Also, that algorithm is on page 4 of fascicle 2b... your claim of "15 pages of Tex'ified math equations" is bullshit.
Oh bullshit. PDE's don't require grad level understanding. When I was an undergrad, I hacked up a simple first-order PDE solver (in PHP no less) for an extra credit problem I was doing at community college, and it did the job. It wasn't great, it wasn't robust or accurate or fast, but it was ridiculously easy to do. And I understood it fine. And I would have understood it fine as a high schooler, if I hadn't gotten kicked out of calculus.
Right. So one day out of every 28, supposing there is no cloud cover, you can spot a human at a kilometer. Note that a 2 meter tall person a kilometer appears to be 2 mm tall at 1 meter away. I'm slightly farsighted and my vision is very clear, and I believe that you could correctly identify a human at that distance by observing its gait -- if it was pointed out to you or you scanned the horizon very carefully, and you were not in a moving vehicle with a windshield in front of you. Moreover, what if there are fences, trees, mail boxes, parked cars, houses, etc. cluttering up the horizon? I call bullshit.
If you're driving on a clear night under a full moon on salt flats, yes, I'd bet you could see a human a kilometer away. Otherwise, you're full of it.
No, it's great. It'll increase the average work day (decrease the amount of time spent happy) by 2 hours per day in the third-world, making them more like us which is what everybody really wants.
Are you referring to the four corner day? I'm happy to see the wisdom of the world's wisest human being put to good use. Thank you.
http://www.timecube.com/
Perhaps they, like the DNF team, refer to the winter in Ecuador.
I dunno... who wouldn't want a uPad?
People enjoy media that supports their world view. You like YouTube, Joe 40 voter likes COPS. You're no better (nor am I).
Also, your age-based dichotomy is obviously based in a lack of communicating with the elderly. My uncle tells a great story about my dad grabbing a cop by the shoulders and kicking him in the junk back in the 60's. To this day, my dad is still more anti-authoritarian as I am -- and I'm one of these 29 year-olds who watches YouTube footage of police abuse, reads Wikileaks, etc.
Not nuclear subs. They propel themselves through the water with hydrogen bombs.
It's why they're so quiet.
I drive stick in stop&go traffic all the time, and I've never understood this argument. Pedals make the car stop and go, auto or manual. Do you have trouble starting and stopping on hills or something?
The reasons to like stick are manifold, but one that's been growing on me recently is that in an automatic, my speed tends to creep up beyond the legal limit if I'm not ever-vigilant. That never happens when I drive stick, since I keep the motor running at a steady RPM without conscious effort.
Proved under what assumptions? Did they rule out every combination of gears, power inputs and outputs? I find neither "one guy tried it before" nor "somebody told me such was proved in a paper" persuasive arguments in light of a pretty persuasive explanation of how this works. My only regret is that I don't have my legos anymore -- I'd have a working model of this up within a few minutes, otherwise.
Man. I'm gonna start tin-foiling my nuts. Ultrasound emitters can be made compact enough to hide anywhere. It'd be trivial to hide them under ATM's, seats in public places, etc. This leads to all sorts of spooky eugenics conspiracy scenarios.
FTFY'all.
FTFY'all.