Computing has changed over the years. Although people like Turing had seen a glimmering of what might come in the future (e.g. chess playing machines), in the early days computing was about numbers. At that time, it made perfect for computer scientists to study numerical methods and calculus, say. (And it still does for people working in certain subdomains of computing.) Today people apply computers much more widely, and well beyond just for numerical algorithms. In the old days the only data structures were floats, integers, and arrays of such. Today we have more abstract datastructures and Category Theory has lots to say about these things. In the old days we just had functions. Now we abstract over functions and separate interfaces from implementations. Again, Category Theory has plenty to say about this.
Many people complain that mathematics isn't relevant to computing. That's because they're being taught the mathematics of old style computing, not the mathematics of modern computing.
On the other hand, Category Theory isn't easy, and not everyone needs it. But it's astonishing how many computing concepts arise in Category Theory in a completely natural way even though it was invented for working in Algebraic Topology. It feels like it's the 'obviously correct' way to think about computation and data.
His discovery of the radio was sparked by an incident where he was instantly aware that his mother who was in another country at the time, had just experienced a severe trauma. This experience is what caused him to think along the lines of sympathetic resonance. The science book people of today don't like guys who talk about such things.
Eh? You're claiming that people don't put Tesla's claimed supernatural experiences into textbooks because of a conspiracy to keep us down? This is the stuff of biography books, not physics textbooks, that's all.
My Digital Image Processing class spent too much time on the Discrete Fourier Transform and dismissed the DCT with some hand-waving
You clearly didn't get the point of the DFT then, though that might not have been your fault. The DCT is nothing other than the DFT applied to even functions. Just about everything you need to know about DCTs you'll learn by studying DFTs. But DCTs are a restricted version of DFTs, DFTs are no harder than DCTs, and DFTs are incredibly useful in image processing (I've used them for fast convolution and image alignment via phase correlation), so just studying DCTs is plain stupid.
What better way to understand recursive data structures as fixed points of functors? What better way to understand operations on such structures than to factor them through initial objects and terminal objects in the appropriate category? What better way to understand side-effects than through monads? What better way to understand functions parameterized by type than as natural transformations? Without Category Theory you're like the proverbial blind men feeling an elephant. They'll perceive the individual parts, but they'll never see the unified whole that links the parts together. If your job is merely to feel the shape of the trunk, maybe that's good enough for you, but when you see the bigger picture you'll never be able to go back.
They were giants in the playground, kicking sand in the faces of babies.
Yes, it's the science fiction cliché, the same one that's repeated over and over again in every science fiction series and anything but the worst of science fiction movies (which, as you point out, has even worse clichés). This cliché is the idea that human ethics and values are so obvious that all you have to do is point them out to the enemy, no matter how different from humans they are, and the enemy will just "get it" and realise that the human way of doing this is right after all. This is the same lame lecture we get from every other episode of Star Trek, whether it's humans teaching Vulcans the value of emotions, or humans teaching the Borg about "individuality" or humans lecturing Klingons on looking after your parents or whatever. Sheridan's speech was a classic example. The turning point was him making the speech, and the Shadows and Vorlons, despite being older and wiser than humans in the way that we tower over ants, just "got it".
One day someone will have the guts to write science fiction about aliens that are actually interesting and different from humans. Aliens that are like your proverbial giants kicking around babies and yet are intelligent and don't give a shit about some pathetic human crying "but what about the children?". The Borg came close, but then the Star Trek writers immediately trashed the concept because they couldn't sustain the idea.
You've displayed very nicely to me your complete inability to reocgnise one of the most reused science fiction cliches of all and mistake it for something profound and subtle and lecture me on the same. That's funny.
And how long would such an alliance last? It's completely unstable and a completely unbelievable outcome. All the Shadows, say, would have to do, is wait for the next major conflict, and everyone would forget about this alliance.
a war is fought on the grandest scale I have ever come across in a sci-fi epic
And it ends with Sheridan saying "go away" and the warring factions just get up and go. After waiting through three seasons that was the biggest let down I have known in TV...ever. B5 was great for the first couple of seasons but after a while it really started to drag. I'm still working on finishing season 5...
But if it had, we'd have many masterpieces by now. And people would have argued over which one was the true continuation of the story, if any. These arguments would become full scale flame wars and would eventually spill over into real wars causing the deaths of millions of people. No, it's better that only one person finish the story so that we have one canonical truth that we can all agree on.
The PS3 contains a board with the word 'Sony' printed on it. All over this board (and through it) are metal tracks connecting bits called 'components'. Many of these components are black squares known as 'chips'. Some of these chips are bigger than the others. Among these are the 'CPU' and the specialized 'graphics chips'. There are some other components like little itty bitty cannisters called 'capacitors' and teeny-weeny rectangles with metal ends called 'surface mount resistors'. There's also a metal box called a 'hard drive' and lots of wires. And there's probably a fan.
Get people predict the important stories of 2007 and then come back in a year to compare predictions. That'd sort out the real gurus and pundits from the wannabes.
Your response might seem reasonable if she had been convicted on the basis of this evidence. But she was merely arrested. You're making a lot of noise over nothing. People all over the world are routinely arrested with this amount of evidence against them. This is entirely reasonable. If she were convicted for associations, that'd be different.
Oh...and I ought to point out that 'democracy' defines how the government is elected and not how much evidence is needed for an arrest.
It's obvious. NASA must have used binary coded decimal for the elapsed time of the mission with the top 4 bits representing the number of years. With the year reaching 10 an overflow happened...
We still know more about our moon then our own oceans
No we don't. You just made that up. Probably motivated by some kind of anti-space exploration ethic because you believe that we should spend more time looking at our own Earth (and think of the poor children living on it!) than looking up to the sky.
Why was this modded up "5 insightful"? It's conflating different meanings of the word "superiority" (or maybe not, the poster never said what was meant by "superior") and there are countless ways to sharpen the meaning of "superior" so that the poster's implication doesn't follow. +5, funny, maybe.
I get hangs after about 5 minutes of use. So does a colleague of mine who just acquired a new MacBook. Do you use the RSS facilities? I wonder if they have something to do with it.
So you're saying that you think these subjects merit having classes despite the fact that you were able to teach these to yourself? It seems to me your education has worked well for you. You know a degree's worth of EE as well as Delphi,.Net, C++ and PHP. Congratulations! Why are you complaining about it?
In your.sig you say "free 1680 x 1050 png desktops". So I checked them out. Nice pictures. I assume they are yours. So why do you compress them with zip when png files are already compressed? For example I downloaded the Japanese Fish example. The compressed file is 0.047% (less than half a thousandth!) smaller than the original png file. What's the point? By storing your images as zips you force viewers to download uncompressed files that could otherwise be viewed directly in the browser at full resolution. Adding this level of annoyance seems hardly worthwhile for something like a few microsecond reduction in download times. You've created a barrier for people who might otherwise get to enjoy your creations with little effort and it probably causes you extra hassle too.
Slashdot Mirror
Many people complain that mathematics isn't relevant to computing. That's because they're being taught the mathematics of old style computing, not the mathematics of modern computing.
On the other hand, Category Theory isn't easy, and not everyone needs it. But it's astonishing how many computing concepts arise in Category Theory in a completely natural way even though it was invented for working in Algebraic Topology. It feels like it's the 'obviously correct' way to think about computation and data.
How does it differ from an "interview"?
What better way to understand recursive data structures as fixed points of functors? What better way to understand operations on such structures than to factor them through initial objects and terminal objects in the appropriate category? What better way to understand side-effects than through monads? What better way to understand functions parameterized by type than as natural transformations? Without Category Theory you're like the proverbial blind men feeling an elephant. They'll perceive the individual parts, but they'll never see the unified whole that links the parts together. If your job is merely to feel the shape of the trunk, maybe that's good enough for you, but when you see the bigger picture you'll never be able to go back.
Hence my sig :-)
One day someone will have the guts to write science fiction about aliens that are actually interesting and different from humans. Aliens that are like your proverbial giants kicking around babies and yet are intelligent and don't give a shit about some pathetic human crying "but what about the children?". The Borg came close, but then the Star Trek writers immediately trashed the concept because they couldn't sustain the idea.
You've displayed very nicely to me your complete inability to reocgnise one of the most reused science fiction cliches of all and mistake it for something profound and subtle and lecture me on the same. That's funny.
And how long would such an alliance last? It's completely unstable and a completely unbelievable outcome. All the Shadows, say, would have to do, is wait for the next major conflict, and everyone would forget about this alliance.
No, I just answered your question. I'm a context-free machine.
It's a pet name, like calling Neiman Marcus "Needless Markup" in the US.
Papers cited here.
But if it had, we'd have many masterpieces by now. And people would have argued over which one was the true continuation of the story, if any. These arguments would become full scale flame wars and would eventually spill over into real wars causing the deaths of millions of people. No, it's better that only one person finish the story so that we have one canonical truth that we can all agree on.
The PS3 contains a board with the word 'Sony' printed on it. All over this board (and through it) are metal tracks connecting bits called 'components'. Many of these components are black squares known as 'chips'. Some of these chips are bigger than the others. Among these are the 'CPU' and the specialized 'graphics chips'. There are some other components like little itty bitty cannisters called 'capacitors' and teeny-weeny rectangles with metal ends called 'surface mount resistors'. There's also a metal box called a 'hard drive' and lots of wires. And there's probably a fan.
Get people predict the important stories of 2007 and then come back in a year to compare predictions. That'd sort out the real gurus and pundits from the wannabes.
Oh...and I ought to point out that 'democracy' defines how the government is elected and not how much evidence is needed for an arrest.
It's obvious. NASA must have used binary coded decimal for the elapsed time of the mission with the top 4 bits representing the number of years. With the year reaching 10 an overflow happened...
Why was this modded up "5 insightful"? It's conflating different meanings of the word "superiority" (or maybe not, the poster never said what was meant by "superior") and there are countless ways to sharpen the meaning of "superior" so that the poster's implication doesn't follow. +5, funny, maybe.
I guess that's fine if your dignity means so little to you...
There are lots of features of Safari I'd like to have. But as I can only run it for a few minutes at a time, they're denied me.
I get hangs after about 5 minutes of use. So does a colleague of mine who just acquired a new MacBook. Do you use the RSS facilities? I wonder if they have something to do with it.
In your .sig you say "free 1680 x 1050 png desktops". So I checked them out. Nice pictures. I assume they are yours. So why do you compress them with zip when png files are already compressed? For example I downloaded the Japanese Fish example. The compressed file is 0.047% (less than half a thousandth!) smaller than the original png file. What's the point? By storing your images as zips you force viewers to download uncompressed files that could otherwise be viewed directly in the browser at full resolution. Adding this level of annoyance seems hardly worthwhile for something like a few microsecond reduction in download times. You've created a barrier for people who might otherwise get to enjoy your creations with little effort and it probably causes you extra hassle too.