Neither Symphony Orchestras nor Blockbuster Moovies have *ANY* practical value whatsoever. Same (despite the hand-eye coordination claims of any adolescentbusted for too many hours in front of the nintendo) for video games. How is a symphony orchestra in any way superior to a video game aside from being more expensive?
The only possible significant difference between a symphony orchestra/movie and video games is orchestras and movies have a longer history, and video games make more money.
In both cases, you experience the thing for a while, then when you're done, you've got nothing to show for it except the experience.
And some better hand-eye coordination for video games, of course.
The hot author of the book, I'm sure, has no problems with lack of sex.
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on
Mathematics and Sex
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Chapter 7 is called "Pick a Sex, Any Sex" and is a tantalizing hint of what the mathematics of evolution is all about. In particular this chapter includes a nice discussion of how sex itself can evolve. (It seems paradoxical that the question of how sex itself can evolve is not yet resolved. After all, in a naive "selfish gene" approach to evolution, it would seem seem that asexual methods of reproduction win hands down. But, as usual, the issues are more complex then naive models would predict. For example, who would have thought that parasites might be the reason sex arose?
What we have here is a pontificator, a purveyor of much BS, a master in the art of using many words to say nothing.
a tantalizing hint of what the mathematics of evolution is all about.
A tantalizing hint? Seems like a pretty crappy chapter if all it has to offer is a hint, doesn't it? Why not just tell us? Is it because the chapter has no idea? Is it because this whole sentence doesn't mean anything at all, and you're just saying there's a tantalizing hint because you have no clue what the chapter is about and we can't prove there's no hint in there? Even if there is a hint, what if the hint is TOTALLY BORING?
In particular this chapter includes a nice discussion of how sex itself can evolve. (It seems paradoxical that the question of how sex itself can evolve is not yet resolved.
There's no paradox here - having a discussion about something that may not yet be resolved is, well, normal. Seems the author just wanted to use the word "paradoxical".
After all, in a naive "selfish gene" approach to evolution, it would seem seem [sic] that asexual methods of reproduction win hands down.
What do you mean, "it would seem"? Does it, or doesn't it? Or is the author just covering his butt because he no idea whether it does or doesn't? And why is there an "After all" in there when this has absolutely NOTHING to do with the sentence before this one?
But, as usual, the issues are more complex then naive models would predict.
Maybe because that's the DEFINITION of naive? And what issues? The author hasn't even told us what issues he's talking about! I also think this summary would have been improved if the author had mentioned that the sky was blue and the earth is down. Of course, the author probably would have said something like "And as everyone knows, the sky is not royal blue, but paradoxically, more of a turquoise, and as usual, one would find the earth, unsurprisingly, located in a direction not above them, clearly showing that the issues are unresolved."
For example, who would have thought that parasites might be the reason sex arose?
An insectophiliac? What is this an example of anyway, other than how the author may have bored their professor into passing their thesis without reading past the first page?
If you've got nothing to say, don't just spew crap. It hurts my brain.
If the way congressional seats are allocated in the US bears any resemblence to models for sexual behavior, wouldn't we expect Republicans to be getting more sex, especially in Texas?
One problem with moving to a "protect your software through patents" model is that obtaining patents is (relatively) expensive, on the order of thousands of dollars per patent on the low end, not to mention 1-3 years of time. So if the only way you can protect your work product, if it happens to be software, is through a patent, that creates a heavy bias towards needing to already have money in order to create, and protect, new software. It also forces you to wait 1-3 years to release your software if you want it protected when you release it instead of having to come back 1-3 years later and enforce your then-acquired patent.
Additionally, the vast majority of software work is not patentable - it's "mundane" stuff. But it's still expensive to produce, and still needs to be protected.
Software also deserves to be protected by copyright for another very good reason - you can duplicate it for free. Things we traditionally PATENT have a cost of construction - there are raw materials, factory for assembly, workers paid to assemble, etc, and things we've traditionally patent are used to DO something - i.e. increase efficiency, whatever. Software lives in both worlds - particular new algorithms function much like newly invented widgets in that they increase efficiency somewhere, but software can also be duplicated for free, much like what we traditionally protect with copyright.
If I produce and sell widgets that are used in a factory to increase production, I can patent my widgets and have exclusive right to produce them for 20 years. After that, other people can duplicate my widgets, BUT ONLY if they also invest in their own widget-producing factory, buy the raw materials to produce widgets, and pay people to produce widgets. I may no longer be able to charge as high of a price for widgets since I now have competitors, but I am not forced out of the widget business either, I'll just have lower margins. And people who just want a handful of widgets will still have to buy them from someone else, since the costs of starting their own widget factory will be prohibitive.
Copyright is what makes software work like widgets. Without copyright, once my software patent expires, anyone can do what my software does for free merely by copying my software. With copyright, they can still implement the same patented function, but they'll still have to pay someone else to actually write the code to implement that patented function. Copyright basically enforces a cost to duplicate producing a widget invented by someone else.
This lawsuit is backwards - copyrights for software are fine - if there's software that does something that you want to do that you don't want to pay for, write the software yourself. What we should be trying to reform is software patents. If someone patented an obvious software algorithm that's preventing you from using your own software, beat that person to a pulp.
If we shot everyone who used drugs, there wouldn't be any customers, and thus there wouldn't be anyone for the criminals to sell to so we'd be able to recoup them into the productive workforce. And the now-dead drug users wouldn't be a burden on that workforce either.
And what about that warm, fuzzy feeling feeling mercenaries call killing? I'm a pacifist, but I recognize the value in snuffing out an addict's existence. It's a good investment and our species' success is a testament to that survival strategy called killing off the weak.
More seriously, it does seem somewhat illogical to write-off the costs of treating millions of addicts as cheap while viewing the costs of treating thousands of criminal violence survivors as expensive.
Is state-sponsored treatment of addicts cheaper than police action? Because if it all costs the same, shooting eople while they're on bad trips is a lot more fun than just treating them when they come out of it.
Shooting is also more effective at preventing relapses.
The point is not that there is collision. The point is that given a particular file, you can compute other files that collide with that file in an amount of time many orders of magnitude less than it would take if you randomly tried files until you hit one that happened to collide.
Someone with the knowledge and will and time can come up with a way to circumvent almost any protective scheme they come up with.
Well duh, that's what separates GOOD protective schemes from BAD ones, and what makes GOOD ones so valuable - they're the ones you can't circumvent.
Likely the only way to really safeguard something like this is to do a very time consuming and cpu intensive comparison of the two files.
Which two files? If you're comparing the file you downloaded from an untrusted source to the file you downloaded from the trusted source, why did you bother downloading the file from the untrusted source in the first place?
The first case is that if you have any given file, you can take a subblock of that file and swap it with one of a number of other subblocks and keep the same checksum. Actually, that's not news, what's news is that you can COMPUTE what those sub blocks are.
The second case is that if you have two files that share the same checksum, you can add the same arbitrary code to both files and they will still share (a new) checksum.
The exploit in the first case is that if you can pick a subblock and then compute new "doppelganger" blocks that you can replace the original subblock with without changing the file's checksum, you can (if not now, someone will probably figure out how to do it in the future) also pick a sub-block and compute new sub blocks that result in a given checksum Y. So I take my original file, and replace some subblock with a subblock of my choosing. This results in a new checksum. Then all I have to do is pick a different subblock and compute a replacement block for that that restores the checksum back to the original value.
Basically, make one change to install my malicious code, then use my ability to compute subblock changes that result in particular checksums to swap a different subblock to restore the original checksum value.
The exploit for the second case is I write a block of malicious code, and then create another file with harmless code that has the same checksum. I then add a real program to the harmless code and distribute it. Some time later, I add the same program to the malicious code (resulting in the same checksum as harmless code + program) and I start distributing the file with the malicious code instead of the file with harmless code.
I think he meant, how is the UW development (ooo, they can move the bar in pong!) significant comopared to the Brown development (He can read email!)
I think the key difference is that the Brown electrodes were places IN the brain, while the UW electrodes were placed ON the brain, so it was less invasive.
Currently in the UK, gambling only attracts gambling addicts. With American-style casinos, they'll start giving you free beer when you gamble, allowing them to cash in on gambling *AND* alcohol addicts.
If your city is like most local governments, your local roads are paid for by property taxes paid mainly by residents, not businesses, unless you have a local sales tax, which is rare precisely because cities don't want to drive sales to the next town over.
As for Wal-Mart, it has just as much right to exist as stores downtown, more so if people wouldrather pay less for things sold in an EFFICIENT RETAIL ENVIRONMENT than pay more for things sold in an inefficient retail environment.
To get back on-topic, your whle premise is incredibly flawed - are you seriously suggesting that everyone from out of town will have green lights and everyone from in-town will have red lights?
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The *REAL* anti-missile program is we sell these missiles to North Korea. Then they fail to launch when the Koreans try to use them.
I wasn't trying to belittle experience, just point out that video games are not any different than symphonies.
And, there are a lot of really, really crappy symphonies just like there are a lot of really, really crappy video games.
Just seems to be easier to find a few million to release a crappy video game than a hundred people to play a crappy symphony.
This way the *AA could crush anything that they see as a potential threat.
Hrm... like an operating system that enables file duplication and networking?
#!/usr/bin/english
use Acronyms;
print "P2P";
Neither Symphony Orchestras nor Blockbuster Moovies have *ANY* practical value whatsoever. Same (despite the hand-eye coordination claims of any adolescentbusted for too many hours in front of the nintendo) for video games. How is a symphony orchestra in any way superior to a video game aside from being more expensive?
The only possible significant difference between a symphony orchestra/movie and video games is orchestras and movies have a longer history, and video games make more money.
In both cases, you experience the thing for a while, then when you're done, you've got nothing to show for it except the experience.
And some better hand-eye coordination for video games, of course.
Check author of submission.
He.
The hot author of the book, I'm sure, has no problems with lack of sex.
Chapter 7 is called "Pick a Sex, Any Sex" and is a tantalizing hint of what the mathematics of evolution is all about. In particular this chapter includes a nice discussion of how sex itself can evolve. (It seems paradoxical that the question of how sex itself can evolve is not yet resolved. After all, in a naive "selfish gene" approach to evolution, it would seem seem that asexual methods of reproduction win hands down. But, as usual, the issues are more complex then naive models would predict. For example, who would have thought that parasites might be the reason sex arose?
What we have here is a pontificator, a purveyor of much BS, a master in the art of using many words to say nothing.
a tantalizing hint of what the mathematics of evolution is all about.
A tantalizing hint? Seems like a pretty crappy chapter if all it has to offer is a hint, doesn't it? Why not just tell us? Is it because the chapter has no idea? Is it because this whole sentence doesn't mean anything at all, and you're just saying there's a tantalizing hint because you have no clue what the chapter is about and we can't prove there's no hint in there? Even if there is a hint, what if the hint is TOTALLY BORING?
In particular this chapter includes a nice discussion of how sex itself can evolve. (It seems paradoxical that the question of how sex itself can evolve is not yet resolved.
There's no paradox here - having a discussion about something that may not yet be resolved is, well, normal. Seems the author just wanted to use the word "paradoxical".
After all, in a naive "selfish gene" approach to evolution, it would seem seem [sic] that asexual methods of reproduction win hands down.
What do you mean, "it would seem"? Does it, or doesn't it? Or is the author just covering his butt because he no idea whether it does or doesn't? And why is there an "After all" in there when this has absolutely NOTHING to do with the sentence before this one?
But, as usual, the issues are more complex then naive models would predict.
Maybe because that's the DEFINITION of naive? And what issues? The author hasn't even told us what issues he's talking about! I also think this summary would have been improved if the author had mentioned that the sky was blue and the earth is down. Of course, the author probably would have said something like "And as everyone knows, the sky is not royal blue, but paradoxically, more of a turquoise, and as usual, one would find the earth, unsurprisingly, located in a direction not above them, clearly showing that the issues are unresolved."
For example, who would have thought that parasites might be the reason sex arose?
An insectophiliac? What is this an example of anyway, other than how the author may have bored their professor into passing their thesis without reading past the first page?
If you've got nothing to say, don't just spew crap. It hurts my brain.
If the way congressional seats are allocated in the US bears any resemblence to models for sexual behavior, wouldn't we expect Republicans to be getting more sex, especially in Texas?
If the author believes sex is a pattern, that would explain his familiarity with the lack of sex, in mathematics or otherwise.
Good sex is art, not math.
Maybe a nice fractal every now and again.
One problem with moving to a "protect your software through patents" model is that obtaining patents is (relatively) expensive, on the order of thousands of dollars per patent on the low end, not to mention 1-3 years of time. So if the only way you can protect your work product, if it happens to be software, is through a patent, that creates a heavy bias towards needing to already have money in order to create, and protect, new software. It also forces you to wait 1-3 years to release your software if you want it protected when you release it instead of having to come back 1-3 years later and enforce your then-acquired patent.
Additionally, the vast majority of software work is not patentable - it's "mundane" stuff. But it's still expensive to produce, and still needs to be protected.
Software also deserves to be protected by copyright for another very good reason - you can duplicate it for free. Things we traditionally PATENT have a cost of construction - there are raw materials, factory for assembly, workers paid to assemble, etc, and things we've traditionally patent are used to DO something - i.e. increase efficiency, whatever. Software lives in both worlds - particular new algorithms function much like newly invented widgets in that they increase efficiency somewhere, but software can also be duplicated for free, much like what we traditionally protect with copyright.
If I produce and sell widgets that are used in a factory to increase production, I can patent my widgets and have exclusive right to produce them for 20 years. After that, other people can duplicate my widgets, BUT ONLY if they also invest in their own widget-producing factory, buy the raw materials to produce widgets, and pay people to produce widgets. I may no longer be able to charge as high of a price for widgets since I now have competitors, but I am not forced out of the widget business either, I'll just have lower margins. And people who just want a handful of widgets will still have to buy them from someone else, since the costs of starting their own widget factory will be prohibitive.
Copyright is what makes software work like widgets. Without copyright, once my software patent expires, anyone can do what my software does for free merely by copying my software. With copyright, they can still implement the same patented function, but they'll still have to pay someone else to actually write the code to implement that patented function. Copyright basically enforces a cost to duplicate producing a widget invented by someone else.
This lawsuit is backwards - copyrights for software are fine - if there's software that does something that you want to do that you don't want to pay for, write the software yourself. What we should be trying to reform is software patents. If someone patented an obvious software algorithm that's preventing you from using your own software, beat that person to a pulp.
The NRA would have a press release.
If we shot everyone who used drugs, there wouldn't be any customers, and thus there wouldn't be anyone for the criminals to sell to so we'd be able to recoup them into the productive workforce. And the now-dead drug users wouldn't be a burden on that workforce either.
And what about that warm, fuzzy feeling feeling mercenaries call killing? I'm a pacifist, but I recognize the value in snuffing out an addict's existence. It's a good investment and our species' success is a testament to that survival strategy called killing off the weak.
More seriously, it does seem somewhat illogical to write-off the costs of treating millions of addicts as cheap while viewing the costs of treating thousands of criminal violence survivors as expensive.
Corporate Executives bankrupting the retirement savings of tens of thousands.
Maybe not VIOLENT, but definitely dangerous.
Ultimately, directly killing one person is a lot less detrimental to society that sending tens of thousands into poverty.
Is state-sponsored treatment of addicts cheaper than police action? Because if it all costs the same, shooting eople while they're on bad trips is a lot more fun than just treating them when they come out of it.
Shooting is also more effective at preventing relapses.
But my PC talks to me.
For some reason though, it keeps calling me "Gordon".
those of us that actually like to RTFA.
I suppose we should leave out milk and cookies on Christmas Eve too.
The point is not that there is collision. The point is that given a particular file, you can compute other files that collide with that file in an amount of time many orders of magnitude less than it would take if you randomly tried files until you hit one that happened to collide.
Someone with the knowledge and will and time can come up with a way to circumvent almost any protective scheme they come up with.
Well duh, that's what separates GOOD protective schemes from BAD ones, and what makes GOOD ones so valuable - they're the ones you can't circumvent.
Likely the only way to really safeguard something like this is to do a very time consuming and cpu intensive comparison of the two files.
Which two files? If you're comparing the file you downloaded from an untrusted source to the file you downloaded from the trusted source, why did you bother downloading the file from the untrusted source in the first place?
The first case is that if you have any given file, you can take a subblock of that file and swap it with one of a number of other subblocks and keep the same checksum. Actually, that's not news, what's news is that you can COMPUTE what those sub blocks are.
The second case is that if you have two files that share the same checksum, you can add the same arbitrary code to both files and they will still share (a new) checksum.
The exploit in the first case is that if you can pick a subblock and then compute new "doppelganger" blocks that you can replace the original subblock with without changing the file's checksum, you can (if not now, someone will probably figure out how to do it in the future) also pick a sub-block and compute new sub blocks that result in a given checksum Y. So I take my original file, and replace some subblock with a subblock of my choosing. This results in a new checksum. Then all I have to do is pick a different subblock and compute a replacement block for that that restores the checksum back to the original value.
Basically, make one change to install my malicious code, then use my ability to compute subblock changes that result in particular checksums to swap a different subblock to restore the original checksum value.
The exploit for the second case is I write a block of malicious code, and then create another file with harmless code that has the same checksum. I then add a real program to the harmless code and distribute it. Some time later, I add the same program to the malicious code (resulting in the same checksum as harmless code + program) and I start distributing the file with the malicious code instead of the file with harmless code.
The engineers from outside the US were able to do the job. Only the top notch products of the US school system could cope.
The top-notch products of the US school system hired you to do the work while they rob the company. Sucker.
No more destructive than say, Robotic Manufacturing.
I think he meant, how is the UW development (ooo, they can move the bar in pong!) significant comopared to the Brown development (He can read email!)
I think the key difference is that the Brown electrodes were places IN the brain, while the UW electrodes were placed ON the brain, so it was less invasive.
Become a religious zealot and move to the US!
Currently in the UK, gambling only attracts gambling addicts. With American-style casinos, they'll start giving you free beer when you gamble, allowing them to cash in on gambling *AND* alcohol addicts.
If your city is like most local governments, your local roads are paid for by property taxes paid mainly by residents, not businesses, unless you have a local sales tax, which is rare precisely because cities don't want to drive sales to the next town over.
As for Wal-Mart, it has just as much right to exist as stores downtown, more so if people wouldrather pay less for things sold in an EFFICIENT RETAIL ENVIRONMENT than pay more for things sold in an inefficient retail environment.
To get back on-topic, your whle premise is incredibly flawed - are you seriously suggesting that everyone from out of town will have green lights and everyone from in-town will have red lights?
News for nerds, comments by morons.