However you don't need to look at exotic tribes, many women from western societies will not leave their hut without first applying their face paint (also made from clay and fat). When you look around, "decorating" ones own body is not only a basic human trait, it' also a very common cultural obsession.
As for time and religion, a remote amazonian tribesman surrounded by food and water probably has much more spare time than your average slashdotter.
Disclaimer: I will go and have a look at the photo now....
My kids are both gorwn now but back in the early nineties one of my kids had a high school maths teacher who taught kids the basics of both algebra and programming using Excel.
The same teacher also taught my older kid in programing using Pascal, my son came home from his class early in the year with a single sheet of paper. He gave me the sheet and said mockingly "the teacer reckons that assignment will take all year" (he already knew how to set up a BBS and I was teaching C lab classes at uni, so he thought he knew something). When I read the sheet I found it was a very clear requirements spec for a toy database that would indeed take him through all the common programming tasks like file handling, common data structures, sorting and searching, input parsing, relational data storage, resource management, display, etc. The project was broken into four phases that were worth 25% of the final mark. Only met the guy once or twice but his techniques rank him as one of the best programming teachers I've come across at any institution.
"Then wouldnt it be more accurate to say "and finally see over 1,000 planets that we already assume exist mathematically"? Or is it working by an average, one telescope usually tends to find 184 planets, and for some reason they never exceed Jupiters size?"
When looking for political sponsors it's best to keep the explaination dramatic, simple, and confident. If that's not enough offer them naming rights for some of the new planets, maybe a ribbon cutting cermony for the rocket, a ride in an air-force jet,... Oh and don't forget the little flags, it's gotta have a little flag.
Seriously though I would like to see NASA drastically cut back on manned pipe dreams and put more effort into this kind of stuff, preferably with an eye toward cooperating vehicles for survey tasks such as a planet hunting interferometer, or monitoring the condition of our own planet (without the frickin' skynet lasers).
"Have any evidence to back your claims? It appears that, as usual, you are lobbing insults to make up for the fact that you are empty handed. "
Actually it's you who is empty handed on the GW thing. I have done my homework, a lot of it by argunig the case on slashdot for 7-8yrs, so before I go to great lengths debunking Lindzden and linking to statements by everyone from the WMO to major oil companies, I would ask you to simply look at your own hand.
Provide me with a link to a SINGLE scientific body that disagrees with the much maligned "consensus". To be a "scientific body" the institution must have at least produced one paper on the topic for a reputable jounal such as Nature or Science. I will accept anything published since 2000.
As for the on topic thing I acknowledge you have done the work and sadly I had not. From what I read, US prosecutions often seem to be randomly applied and/or politically motivated, so I guess anything is possible. IIRC similar laws in the 60's & 70's were used to supress peace-nicks, pro-abortionists, homosexuuals, environmentalists, commies, etc. (I know they were used here in Oz).
BTW: I was attacking the WP opinion pages (Lindzen in paricular), sorry if I came over as narky.
Mugabe was the one who turned away the ship full of GM corn (the same variety the US eats in it's cearal), not the environmentalists. Other dictators have turned away western vaccinations and anti-aids medicine using equally bizzare excuses.
The fact is that this has nothing to do with environmentalists, it is politics. Dictator X doesn't want the population getting aid from someone else because dictator X will lose some of his control over said population. The same bullshit can be seen in Burma at the moment.
This is not to say that the extremist environmentalist don't want to ban GM crops but the 'fringe elements' do not have that sort of power in the west, in Africa, or anywhere else I have heard of.
Now since you have been to Africa and I haven't I could be wrong about the fucked up politics of the region. If that is the case you should easily be able to link to news reports showing which environmentalists are turning back aid ships and/or stopping them from being loaded.
Control over finite resources == survival in hard times, for example both sides of this (remarkably civil) thread are willing to kill to defend their 'rights'. What they really mean by rights is access to basic needs like food, water, shelter, sewerage, electricity,...,playstation,...,where does 'basic needs' stop? Who dies if there is not enough water for everyone? - How much is 'enough'?
Your troll is about as mind-numbingly senseless as bouncing your head off a Koran and chanting "kill all infidels".
This particular "envirofacist" once supported a young family in the early 80's by working/living at an old growth sawmill in Australia. The logs from the trees we were cutting were up to 14' in diameter, I left the job becuse the forestry lease was running out and the area was to become a national park. We had some problems with people up trees, chained to dozers, ect, but they pale in comparison to professional "hippie hunters" who went and busted up protester camps.
BTW: I was implying the media (and it's readers) are generally lazy, not evil.
"Just environmentalists looking for a reason to hate the technology."
People who shun technology are called Ludites.
The last time I heard of a windfarm cancelled because of birds was here in the state of Victoria in Australia, it was about 2yrs ago. It was a right-wing government minister that killed the project, obsetnsibly because of concerns by experts over "rare birds". This proffesional anti-environmentalist trawled the environmental impact statement and found a mention of (IIRC) the orange-bellied parrot. He was the one who chose to kill the project there were no prosteters, and the impact statement had given the project the thumbs-up.
The "environmentalists" have been ranting about wind farms since the 1970's, the vast majority of people (green or otherwise) knew the bird thing was bullshit and wanted the farm. However when the minister cancelled the project because "experts said rare parrots were found breeding in the area", mass-media dutifully blamed "environmentalists".
2. I think AGW is high on the list of several urgent global problems and I am also aware of the solar flux thing - so I put this one down as anecdotal.
3. Mass media maybe, they seem to need a target to point their finger at in just about everything. Scientists however have done no such thing - please look at this widely accepted graph that is in line with, and easier to understand than, the IPCC findings most recently described in the 2007 IPCC SPM.
"Artificial puzzles can never match the depth of real ones."
Your missing my point. And you probably haven't thought about the significance of "artficial puzzles" such as the undeciphered script of the Indus valley or the cracking of the enigma machine in WW2.
In both examples "someone else" knew the answer, unfortunately in the first example they are all dead, and in the second they were trying to kill the code crackers.
Every programmer knows behaviour depends on context, and when the context involves humans the potential for screwing up is infinite. I agree we have no idea how to measure the information content in DNA, but just because it has awe inspiring complexity does not mean the analogy to "code" is a useless one.
Getting back to the title of this post - Code is interesting for it's own sake, if the original poster can't see the beauty and terror of a "clockwork universe" in that video, words won't help.
Yes, what the halting problem states is that it is impossible to figure out if an algorithim halts without actually following the the algorithim until it...well...halts. If you can get to the stop point faster with the same results then you have found a more efficient algorithim.
In no way does the halting problem mean that you can/cannot prove a particular algorithim halts.
Most of the tools available (eg: bounds checker) take a long time to diagnose a chunk of code. They are not a debugging tool, they are a testing tool that can be very usefull when testing for null pointers and memory leaks. You still need a human to: a) configure and run the tool, b)evaluate the results, and c) fix any problems found.
There is a reason your post should be modded as flaimbait. You link a persons nationality to their abilty for independent thought, by definition that is racist, by observation it is false.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree, but the GP's skeptcisim is misplaced. The women of the never use water to wash themselves. Rather they go about their day-to-day activities covered head-to-toe in body paint made from clay and animal fat. They also smoke in a very unusually manner. :o.
However you don't need to look at exotic tribes, many women from western societies will not leave their hut without first applying their face paint (also made from clay and fat). When you look around, "decorating" ones own body is not only a basic human trait, it' also a very common cultural obsession.
As for time and religion, a remote amazonian tribesman surrounded by food and water probably has much more spare time than your average slashdotter.
Disclaimer: I will go and have a look at the photo now....
I'm an Aussie and when I read about the dunkin' doghnut ads I thought the same thing. OTOH, what is it they say about publicity?
"there is no question about it being intentional harm with wide impact, and therefore terrorism"
Okaaaaaayyyy.... So tell us who was 'terrified', and what was it that 'terrified' them?
My kids are both gorwn now but back in the early nineties one of my kids had a high school maths teacher who taught kids the basics of both algebra and programming using Excel.
The same teacher also taught my older kid in programing using Pascal, my son came home from his class early in the year with a single sheet of paper. He gave me the sheet and said mockingly "the teacer reckons that assignment will take all year" (he already knew how to set up a BBS and I was teaching C lab classes at uni, so he thought he knew something). When I read the sheet I found it was a very clear requirements spec for a toy database that would indeed take him through all the common programming tasks like file handling, common data structures, sorting and searching, input parsing, relational data storage, resource management, display, etc. The project was broken into four phases that were worth 25% of the final mark. Only met the guy once or twice but his techniques rank him as one of the best programming teachers I've come across at any institution.
"Then wouldnt it be more accurate to say "and finally see over 1,000 planets that we already assume exist mathematically"? Or is it working by an average, one telescope usually tends to find 184 planets, and for some reason they never exceed Jupiters size?"
When looking for political sponsors it's best to keep the explaination dramatic, simple, and confident. If that's not enough offer them naming rights for some of the new planets, maybe a ribbon cutting cermony for the rocket, a ride in an air-force jet,... Oh and don't forget the little flags, it's gotta have a little flag.
Seriously though I would like to see NASA drastically cut back on manned pipe dreams and put more effort into this kind of stuff, preferably with an eye toward cooperating vehicles for survey tasks such as a planet hunting interferometer, or monitoring the condition of our own planet (without the frickin' skynet lasers).
"Have any evidence to back your claims? It appears that, as usual, you are lobbing insults to make up for the fact that you are empty handed. "
Actually it's you who is empty handed on the GW thing. I have done my homework, a lot of it by argunig the case on slashdot for 7-8yrs, so before I go to great lengths debunking Lindzden and linking to statements by everyone from the WMO to major oil companies, I would ask you to simply look at your own hand.
Provide me with a link to a SINGLE scientific body that disagrees with the much maligned "consensus". To be a "scientific body" the institution must have at least produced one paper on the topic for a reputable jounal such as Nature or Science. I will accept anything published since 2000.
As for the on topic thing I acknowledge you have done the work and sadly I had not. From what I read, US prosecutions often seem to be randomly applied and/or politically motivated, so I guess anything is possible. IIRC similar laws in the 60's & 70's were used to supress peace-nicks, pro-abortionists, homosexuuals, environmentalists, commies, etc. (I know they were used here in Oz).
BTW: I was attacking the WP opinion pages (Lindzen in paricular), sorry if I came over as narky.
No wonder you think GW is drivel, you read WP opinion columns and it seems you actually belive them.
Try reading the news section of the very same paper once in a while and note how the reporting of fact differs from the opinions of political hacks.
Mugabe was the one who turned away the ship full of GM corn (the same variety the US eats in it's cearal), not the environmentalists. Other dictators have turned away western vaccinations and anti-aids medicine using equally bizzare excuses.
The fact is that this has nothing to do with environmentalists, it is politics. Dictator X doesn't want the population getting aid from someone else because dictator X will lose some of his control over said population. The same bullshit can be seen in Burma at the moment.
This is not to say that the extremist environmentalist don't want to ban GM crops but the 'fringe elements' do not have that sort of power in the west, in Africa, or anywhere else I have heard of.
Now since you have been to Africa and I haven't I could be wrong about the fucked up politics of the region. If that is the case you should easily be able to link to news reports showing which environmentalists are turning back aid ships and/or stopping them from being loaded.
"See: Africa and starvation."
I had no idea that Mugabe was an environmentalist?
"LOL senseless eh? So why take the time to reply?"
I'm an environmentalists, I care about dumb animals.
"for no reason whatsoever"
Control over finite resources == survival in hard times, for example both sides of this (remarkably civil) thread are willing to kill to defend their 'rights'. What they really mean by rights is access to basic needs like food, water, shelter, sewerage, electricity,...,playstation,...,where does 'basic needs' stop? Who dies if there is not enough water for everyone? - How much is 'enough'?
Nature rewards survival, the two opposing forces of competion and co-operation explain much of the random ass-headed cruelty of the world.
Your troll is about as mind-numbingly senseless as bouncing your head off a Koran and chanting "kill all infidels".
This particular "envirofacist" once supported a young family in the early 80's by working/living at an old growth sawmill in Australia. The logs from the trees we were cutting were up to 14' in diameter, I left the job becuse the forestry lease was running out and the area was to become a national park. We had some problems with people up trees, chained to dozers, ect, but they pale in comparison to professional "hippie hunters" who went and busted up protester camps.
BTW: I was implying the media (and it's readers) are generally lazy, not evil.
Agreed, my Australian cigarette packet says "20,000 smoking related deaths a year". These include, cancer, heart attck, stroke, etc.
"Just environmentalists looking for a reason to hate the technology."
People who shun technology are called Ludites.
The last time I heard of a windfarm cancelled because of birds was here in the state of Victoria in Australia, it was about 2yrs ago. It was a right-wing government minister that killed the project, obsetnsibly because of concerns by experts over "rare birds". This proffesional anti-environmentalist trawled the environmental impact statement and found a mention of (IIRC) the orange-bellied parrot. He was the one who chose to kill the project there were no prosteters, and the impact statement had given the project the thumbs-up.
The "environmentalists" have been ranting about wind farms since the 1970's, the vast majority of people (green or otherwise) knew the bird thing was bullshit and wanted the farm. However when the minister cancelled the project because "experts said rare parrots were found breeding in the area", mass-media dutifully blamed "environmentalists".
1. Yes
2. I think AGW is high on the list of several urgent global problems and I am also aware of the solar flux thing - so I put this one down as anecdotal.
3. Mass media maybe, they seem to need a target to point their finger at in just about everything. Scientists however have done no such thing - please look at this widely accepted graph that is in line with, and easier to understand than, the IPCC findings most recently described in the 2007 IPCC SPM.
BTW: IANAC and I agree the OP was humourous.
Please stay on topic, the in-depth discussion is about how impressive one's /. uid is.....another 600,000 posts and I'm looking good. :o
"Artificial puzzles can never match the depth of real ones."
Your missing my point. And you probably haven't thought about the significance of "artficial puzzles" such as the undeciphered script of the Indus valley or the cracking of the enigma machine in WW2.
In both examples "someone else" knew the answer, unfortunately in the first example they are all dead, and in the second they were trying to kill the code crackers.
Every programmer knows behaviour depends on context, and when the context involves humans the potential for screwing up is infinite. I agree we have no idea how to measure the information content in DNA, but just because it has awe inspiring complexity does not mean the analogy to "code" is a useless one.
Getting back to the title of this post - Code is interesting for it's own sake, if the original poster can't see the beauty and terror of a "clockwork universe" in that video, words won't help.
Ditto, the jibe is self referencing: "FRANK SHOEMAKER WOULD CALL THIS NOISE" but it could also refer to the extra 'S'.
Yes, what the halting problem states is that it is impossible to figure out if an algorithim halts without actually following the the algorithim until it...well...halts. If you can get to the stop point faster with the same results then you have found a more efficient algorithim.
In no way does the halting problem mean that you can/cannot prove a particular algorithim halts.
Most of the tools available (eg: bounds checker) take a long time to diagnose a chunk of code. They are not a debugging tool, they are a testing tool that can be very usefull when testing for null pointers and memory leaks. You still need a human to: a) configure and run the tool, b)evaluate the results, and c) fix any problems found.
"nothing is set in stone like your pretending"
Fuck-off troll.
"One Pinatubo?
Several, unless you count the magma blob below.
There is a reason your post should be modded as flaimbait. You link a persons nationality to their abilty for independent thought, by definition that is racist, by observation it is false.
Stop trolling me, I'm not biting any more dumass.
Wanker! :P