I'm just wondering what the position of Flash and open source etc.
Q1: Is the swf format open? i.e. are their any restrictions on
creating clients which read swf or programs which can create swf.
Q2: Is it API documented?
Q3: Are there patent problems?
Q4: are there any good open source alternatives to Flash Player?
Q5: Any good open source flash dev tools?
Rich
There is a journal called experimental mathematics
which is devoted to using computers to do experiments in mathematics.
This was mainly in the field of geometry and Geometry Center
ww.geom.umn.edu was a center for this kind of work.
Theres also a growing field of mathematical visulisation.
As an example of this technique was investigating the local clasification of maps from the plane to the plane, which I took part in at Liverpool Uni.
Here we were looking for special cases in a four parameter family of maps.
I.e. there were four numbers you could change and each set of parameters gave
a different mapping. Using visulisation programs on a computer
I managed to find a special case which had not been found before.
When I showed the pictures to the rest of the dept no one beleived
them as they seemed to contradict the theory. Was is a bug in the software,
a misleading piciture or a bug in the theory?
In the end the experimental pictures proved to be correct and the theory was
improved to account for it, involving lots of pen an paper mathematical work.
This sort of investigation is a long way from the grand formal proofs in the article. But perhaps more indicative of the way that
computers can be used to inform mathematics. More like the
experimental physics/theoretical physics devide. In this case
is generation of a counter example.
One of the big problems with using computers is infinity.
Most interesting problems in mathematics involve an infinite number of cases.
Fermat: a^n+b^n=c^n four countably infinite numbers (integers).
In the map case above it was four real numbers (uncountable infinities)
Furthermore theory had proved that the underlying problem (all
posible maps), which involved a countably infinite number of
parameters which could all take an uncountable infinite number of values,
could be reduced to just four parameters. Even with Moore's law its going
to be hard to check all those cases. In the four colour theorem there is an infinite number of pattern to considered, the real smart bit in the theorem
was showing that these could be reduced to just a finite number of special cases. In the clasification of simple groups we have several infinite
of groups and a few (26) special cases.
Infinity will also show its head in formal methods. More to the point
combinitoric complexity. As the number of symbols in the formal sequence
increases so the numeber of cases you need to consider grows rapidily,
hints of NP-hard problems here and testing for primeness.
This makes thing hard when you start with a few axioms and try to find
all the logical consequences.
Personally I don't have a problem with either of the proofs mentioned in the article. Both follow the same pattern, 1) reduce an infinite number of cases
to a finite number of cases, 2) then check those using a computer. I can
check the mathematics of 1) and write my own program to check 2). Hopefully
the code's open sourced as well. Doesn't mean their particularly satisfying proof, or particually elegant, 10,000 special cases does not really
flip my mathematical switch. Classification of simple groups does have
a more elagant result, and deeper consequeces. Wilke's proof for Fermat,
and the more interesting underlying conjecture, though long, is much more
elagant, and more to the point much deeper opening up a whole new field.
End of the day, its another one of the typical stuff we get in the press.
Nothing much new here. This debate on four colour theorem's computer proof
has been around for a good while now, and mathematics has for the most part
gone on as normal.
The word spelling checker has been a boon to me, and while not perfect the grammar
checker has helped me a few time.
Yes make it better. If a bit of public critisism can make that happen, then great.
Where I really need my spelling checker is in this form right here.
I know my spelling is bad, I know I'm lazy (or is that dyslexic),
but I would like to submit a correctly spelt post and a spelling checker in slashdot could be great.
Two ways this do this. Either, after a preview run the text through Ispell
and print the mistakes. Or, build a spell checker into the web browser
so that I can spell check every form I type it.
Welcome to the world of FE. Students who don't want to be there,
want (and need) the minimum information to get by.
We not training mathematicians here, it nurses and midwives.
One hour long
leason to cover the normal distribution and variance. Thats it,
new topic next week.
Don't confuse them. Don't even mention difference between sample and population it will only confuse. Dont mention difference between N or N-1 more confusion.
What have the kids learnt. That standard deviation gives a measure of spread of data. High sd big spread, low sd small spread.
It does not sould like much, but it will equip them some
vague idea of the terms should them come across it in the future.
Education is one of the places where computers don't really belong.
Some times yes, some times no.
At the FE college I work at computers are a very useful tool.
I've been teaching a module on statistics and computers have been
a very useful tool. Perhaps the two leasons the students really undersood
the best were workshop sesions where we did some stats using excel.
Typeing =stdev(A1:A10) helped them understand the meaning of
standard deviation much better than an hour long session
on the subject with board work and exercises.
Maybe it depends on the learners perfered way of working.
Some students can handle abstractions like integration well
(indeed its one of the marks of a good mathematician). However
for many students filling the board with symbols will do nothing but confuse.
For these students seeing direct feedback from their work
will provide motivation and aid understanding.
Another important question is what are the aims of the teaching process.
Are these just narrow aims like the Reading, Writing and Arithmatic
mentioned in the article or preparing students for the world.
Education today is far more than just this very narrow set of criteria.
Of course computers should not be a replacement for teachers.
They are just another tool in a teachers toolkit to be used when appropriate.
Its still early days as the education sector learns how best to use them.
Electronic whiteboards are appearing everywhere, but I've rarely seem them used well, (the most fun I've had with a white board
was displaying 3D models
mathematical surfaces
which allowed you to rotate them which your hand. True tactile computing).
I'd love to see a move towards better computer resources for teaching.
So much is posible but so littles been done. Perhaps open-source/open content
ideas could work in education with some schemes to combine teachers talents
and really aid teaching.
Imagine if office buildings could somehow be turned into secure sleeping quarters during their unused hours.
The two basic problems are sanitation and security.
Both of which cost money. So the sharing is not cost free. Following the article you could say the this is the economic reason why the sharing of office space does not happen.
Well there are some females who are good at maths. At one point on the postgraduate program in a pure maths dept which I was at the number of female postgrads actually outnumbered the number of males. There were also
some very smart female profs there.
Its very dificult to say anything on this matter. There are so many factors which make it harder for women to go up the maths ladder. From school with a host of curtural preasures and expetations onwards. The social/curtural effect probably swamp any natural ability.
OK so not the best interview, but don't diss Ben so much.
As a Ph.D sutudent he has probably spent three years full time
research on spyware, has copiled some good resources on funding of spyware,
has been an expert witness in a legal case against gator.
So does maybe know a bit more on this issue than your average slashdotter.
Quite a few people seem to have questions as to what this is all about. One way you could think if this is the difference between say Yahoo or the Open Directory
and a wiki. In the former there is a fixed hierarchy of subjects and all articles must fit into this hiearachy. In a wiki anyone can create a page with any title and any article. You could contrast this with the cathedrial (fixed hiarachy) and the bazzar (grass root bottom up).
Theres pluses and minuses with each approach.
Have a read of the folksonomies
article which once you get to the core was not to dificult to understand.
I've consistantly found wikipedia to be by far the best source of info on the internet. Nowday I just go straight to wikipedia rather than an google search.
Maybe its strongest in maths, science etc. but its giving me the info I want.
First off in wikipedia you get the full article, rather than a shorter article and a sales pitch. Thats the main problem with britanica, its not part of the free internet. It's content is only for those prepared to pay. Well I want a resource that I can point my friends, family and colegues to. Britanica does not cut it.
I was not sure which 'Hamilton' Robert McHenry was refering to.
Of more interest to me was William Hamilton the mathematician, creator of the quatornians. I can read something about him on wikipedia, but not in Britanica.
Maybe a better comparision is with other free internet sources. I'd trust
the reliability of wikipedia far more than any other source on the internet.
And the date issue, is now fixed! How quickly could an error in Britanica be fixed? Seems like these monkeys are pretty quick off the ball.
Wikipedia got a nicer picture!
Britanica, consistantly times out. Wheres the 'reliability' in that.
I think Robert McHenry is disingenious, his whole article revolves around one bug, and the usual unfounded critiques of open source. Anyone in software knows how easy it is to find a bug. One bug does not make a useless bit of software or resource.
The article seems like the typical rubishing piece, put out by another orginization feeling threatened buy this 'open' stuff.
I was quite supried to see how small in terms of line count the Java solution was.
I was expecting to see a much higher disparity between the lisp like solutions and more standard languages.
The advent of the Codeless Development Environment (CDE)
This reminds me of way back (mid 80's) when Lotus 1,2,3 (a speadsheet) was heralded as a way to program without code. We can see from that that certain aspects of programming were made irrelivant. I suspect that we will see a continuation of the trend as more and more aspects which used to be in the programmers domain get automated and others where skills which were originally a programmers bread and butter become the domain of other professions. (Say web page design was originally a programmers task - no longer!).
"Junk" in DNA (e.g., "latent" DNA) is probably not junk, we just don't know the function (yet). No scientist worth their salt would admit that (at least not in earshot of a grant proposal review committee!)
From what I've read there is a case that there is real Junk in the DNA. Various sequences which at some point in the past served a purpose but now (like the human apendix) the original function is no longer relavant. I've also read somewhere that some of the DNA is actually a sort of virus which eons ago colanised the DNA sequence.
From Junk DNA
There are many theories about the factors that shaped junk DNA and why it persists in the genome. Speculations are that:
These chromosomal regions are trash heaps of defunct genes, sometimes known as pseudogenes, which have been cast aside and fragmented during evolution. Evidence for a related hypothesis suggests that the junk represents the accumulated DNA of failed viruses.
Junk DNA acts as a protective buffer against genetic damage and harmful mutations. An overwhelming percentage of DNA is irrelevant to the metabolic and developmental processes, so it is unlikely any single, random insult to the nucleotide sequence will affect the organism.
Junk DNA provides a reservoir of sequences from which potentially advantageous new genes can emerge.
Junk DNA serves the role as "meta-DNA", being involved in the development of an organism from embryo to adult. Recent results indicate that so-called ultraconserved elements of junk DNA are common to all vertebrates, and this could mean that this part of the genome is essential to our survival.
It may be that a combination of these are true, or partly true.
The first of these seem to indicate a posibility of real junk.
Note the.clone() in the above example. In other words a new object is created, which is generally not what you want for a speed efficent numerical routines. Especially if your dealing with 100*100 matricies.
Now do you know whether the overloading of + for some third party number objects is actually going to cause a clone to take place or not?
The method I always use for similar problems is to pre define all my object
and uses methods where one of the arguments (say the first) is the result object.
Matrix m1 = new Matrix(); Matrix m2 = new Matrix(); Matrix res = new Matrix(); multiply(res,m1,m2); // or res.multiply(m1,m1);// set res to be product of these matricies
To my mind heavy numerics is precisely where you wish to avoid using a complicated mechanism like overloading.
Time to read up on macro economics. How presidents make or destroy jobs:
Change corperate tax rates. If a buisness has to
pay higer taxes they need to cut costs somewhere else, often by
fireing workers.
Implement policies which affect interest rates. High interest rates mean companies pay more on loans, less for the workers.
Implement policies which affect international exchange rates. Seen how the pound-doler rate has gone sky high this year, from about 1.5 to 1.8.
That means it costs more to import, exports are cheeper. The doller is very week at the moment indicating little faith in US econonmy by international finance.
Want better employees, put more money into education!
Want heathier employees, put money into health!
Sort out your budget deficit! The US is a bad place to invest in right now. You have gone way over budget.
Fair tax rates. Bush's policies have given much bigger tax breaks to the well off than the working population. Means the average man on the street
has less in his pocket, so less to spend, hence depresses the economy,
depressed economy means less jobs!
Bomb the hell out of a country, rig the system so that US companies get the prime rebuilding contract = more jobs.
Thats just for starters. Its a very complicated with many interrelations.
For instance the UK economy has done very well in the last few years due to good economic policies like counter-cyclic investment.
The one thing you can say is that probably every policy will somehow affect the number of unemployed.
Disclaimer, I'm from the UK so I don't know which instruments like setting the base interest rate are available. Practically all I know about the sorry state of your economy I've learnt from playing bushgame www.bushgame.com which I'd recomend to all.
I'm working on a driving simulator.....
We're trying to create a driveable encyclopedia of cars and racing history.
This type of game might just be where the open source movement comes in.
A good niche market, and more to the point creating an environment for
other hobbyiest to share their work. Makes me think of my past life as a model railway enthuist, it would be great to have system where I could build my own model of the "flying scotsman" and share it with other likeminded folk.
Theres a whole geek army out there who would like to do the same.
Maybe its a CPAN for model railway fans.
Forget trying to make the next killer game, go for your obscure interests,
the corperates have not got the breath for that.
I've reciently come across a fork of wikipedia
wikiinfo.
How do you feel about this, good thing, bad thing? Does it
indicate signs of problems in wikipedia?
Wow it was kind of a shock seeing those budget deficit figures.
Has the US really messed up that badly!
As for taxes there is a famous quote from Plato:
Its imposible for a society to be "fair", "free", and "equal".
The argument funs something like:
Parental love causes the fundamental paradox of politics: no society can be simultaneously fair, free and equal. If it is fair, people who work harder will accumulate more. If it is free, people will give their wealth to their children. But then it cannot be equal, for some people will inherit wealth they did not earn. Ever since Plato called attention to these tradeoffs in 'The Republic', most political ideologies can be defined by the stance they take on which of these ideals should yield.
A quote by Steven Pinkner from http://homepage.eircom.net/~odyssey/Politics/Liber ty/Society.html
You can trace the whole idea of redistributive taxes
as a way to promote the "equals" side of things.
Abandon this an inequality rises, and eventually the proles
revolt!
As ever you ammericans are behind the times on this!
The Guardian published a similar article a couple of months back:
The Role of Play.
My personal favorite idea for a political game would
be a god game with the whole world instead of a city.
You would play the UN,WTO and other global orginisations.
Missions might be things like:
"Feed the world", "Eliminate Poverty", "Stop Climate Change"
but I've a feeling these might be a bit tricky.
I'm suprised no one has mentioned
BitPass
this is quite a mature micropayment system,
the first one Scot MacCloud (of online comic fame)
though good enough.
I already pay for internet access; why would I want to, or should I have to, pay for something which is currently free?
So why do the ISP's get the internet dolars?
Surely content providers deserve some slice of the cake.
As a very skint content provider, I actually think that
I'm out compeating myself. We provide an online and highly
rated database of information about plants, and also
an offline version for sale. But hardly anyone want to actually
buy the data as its free online. Sometimes I feel like
just withdrawing the online version to boost sales.
A good micropayment system could help keep such
services online, indeed it might even stimulate
more higher quality information on the internet.
IE is a browser with no soul. I want it to be Mozilla because I think that people who care deserve a browser with a soul.
I was unaware that a soul was a new feature in Mozilla.
Does it mean that it will automatically be downloading
old Mowtown tunes? Or maybe its a new name for
content filtering so we only see site which are good for us.
So whats this soul do. Users need to know?
Several years ago I remaped Caps Lock to Shift on my Win98 box.
Great for me as it stops my sentances coming out in CAPS by mistake.
However, it does seem to confuse kids and computer newbies;
for some reason they find it conceptually easier to hit the
caps lock key and then type a capital letter rather than hitting shift
and the letter they want at same time. It does allow 1 finger typing
and says what it does Caps Lock -> capitals, for a newbie
what does "shift" mean, shift my chair?
I'm just wondering if your getting your units confused.
1,221,191 mega watts * 365 days * 12 hours = 5,348,816,580 mega watt hours
= 5,348,816,580,000 kilo watt hours. Seems like this is more than
the 3,848,000,000,000 kwh the doe quotes.
With that comes, I assume, the expectation that every possible free tract of land had a windmill farm stuck on it.
Nope, current US capacity = 6,374 MW (American Wind Energy Association)
so a 200 fold increase, a big increase but from a very low baseline.
Wind power just doesn't cut it: reason being for one that it can't provide power all the time, and can't provide power when the wind is too slow or too hard.
True, but wind power is just one form of alternative energy.
When you consider a multi-source system the the fact that
one part is not producing at one time has less effect.
The greatest strain on the systems happens during peek demands
say the advert break in Friends when everyone puts the kettle on.
Neither wind power or nuclear can provide the "instant on" needed
to meet peek demand. I'm aware of two different means of
meeting this, coal/gas/oil fired stations which can be switched on
quickly and an interesting hydro scheme I've seen in Wales (UK).
The station has two large lakes, one at the top of
a hill and one at the bottom. During times of low demand
excess power in the system is used to pump water up the hill.
At peek demand water flows down again powering generators.
And to boot, it's way more expensive than any other from of energy except solar.
Costs are going down as research improves. Theres been
precious little money put into research of alternative energy
sources, in UK its only about a tenth of research money in
atomics. Yes they are a bit more 3.7 p/KWh as opposed to 2.5p/KWh
but in the same ball park. (from Uranium Information Centre Ltd). Capital costs are less, decomisioning
costs are less.
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the risk of default on these loans [for new nuclear stations] is "very high--well above 50 percent." CBO also states that a new nuclear plant would be "uneconomic to operate because of its high construction costs relative to other electricity generation sources." The Congressional Research Service estimates the loan guarantees will cost between $14 and $16 billion. (from Friends of the Earth).
Solar. Has its place, basically two form; water heating; and ecletricity
generating. Small scale water heeting can be very cheep, one old
radiator, painted black, a few pipes and a pump. Can pre-heat your
water reducing energy needed. Solar cells are an expensive solution
and not very eco friendly considerning all the harmful effects of
chip manfacture.
At the project I work on all our electricity needs come from wind
and solar. A large battery bank provides backup storage for when
its either not sunny, or not windy. Then again our electricity needs
are small, laptops and a few lights.
Tidal. A very young technology.
like reducing tides, or maybe removing so much energy from the ocean tides that certain ocean streams will stop/reverse/whatever.
How much energy would tidal power consume? Very much less than
the oceans produced, consider the energy from moving 1000km*1000km*1km of water
back and forth twice a day! Yes there may be local effects but
it won't make a dent in the global picture.
There are some very exciting tidal solutions. New scientist
reciently did a good review.
Small scale hydro. A few centries ago water mills ground
most of the corn in the UK. Put some moden plants where the old
mills were and thats a lot of energy.
Energy crops. A big push in the UK for growing energy crops
at the moment. Basically carbon neutral. Short rotation willow
coppice and certain grasses are used. Bio-gas, and bio-diesal
can be produced. A lot of Brasils cars are run on suger cane.
Energy conservation. Most cost effective solution
is actually to reduce energy demand. Loft insulation,
low energy bulbs, more efficient fridges all help.
Pasive Solar. Theres a school in Liverpool (not noted for
its sun) which is entirely heated by pasive solar.
Smart building design with lots of south facing windows
and thermal storage (say by storing water underground)
can make a cost effective solution.
Combined Heat and Power. The idea here is that
waste heat from electricity generation is used for heating.
At Live
The BBC is the news and media branch of the government
of the United Kingdom. It is not a "good thing" to have
the state control things like this.
This is very far from the truth. They have almost complete
editorial independance, and are often our biggest
critic of the govenment. Comparisions with a 1984
style department of truth hold no water. Witness the
Kelly Afair.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm just wondering what the position of Flash and open source etc. Q1: Is the swf format open? i.e. are their any restrictions on creating clients which read swf or programs which can create swf. Q2: Is it API documented? Q3: Are there patent problems? Q4: are there any good open source alternatives to Flash Player? Q5: Any good open source flash dev tools? Rich
As an example of this technique was investigating the local clasification of maps from the plane to the plane, which I took part in at Liverpool Uni. Here we were looking for special cases in a four parameter family of maps. I.e. there were four numbers you could change and each set of parameters gave a different mapping. Using visulisation programs on a computer I managed to find a special case which had not been found before. When I showed the pictures to the rest of the dept no one beleived them as they seemed to contradict the theory. Was is a bug in the software, a misleading piciture or a bug in the theory?
In the end the experimental pictures proved to be correct and the theory was improved to account for it, involving lots of pen an paper mathematical work.
This sort of investigation is a long way from the grand formal proofs in the article. But perhaps more indicative of the way that computers can be used to inform mathematics. More like the experimental physics/theoretical physics devide. In this case is generation of a counter example.
One of the big problems with using computers is infinity. Most interesting problems in mathematics involve an infinite number of cases. Fermat: a^n+b^n=c^n four countably infinite numbers (integers). In the map case above it was four real numbers (uncountable infinities) Furthermore theory had proved that the underlying problem (all posible maps), which involved a countably infinite number of parameters which could all take an uncountable infinite number of values, could be reduced to just four parameters. Even with Moore's law its going to be hard to check all those cases. In the four colour theorem there is an infinite number of pattern to considered, the real smart bit in the theorem was showing that these could be reduced to just a finite number of special cases. In the clasification of simple groups we have several infinite of groups and a few (26) special cases.
Infinity will also show its head in formal methods. More to the point combinitoric complexity. As the number of symbols in the formal sequence increases so the numeber of cases you need to consider grows rapidily, hints of NP-hard problems here and testing for primeness. This makes thing hard when you start with a few axioms and try to find all the logical consequences.
Personally I don't have a problem with either of the proofs mentioned in the article. Both follow the same pattern, 1) reduce an infinite number of cases to a finite number of cases, 2) then check those using a computer. I can check the mathematics of 1) and write my own program to check 2). Hopefully the code's open sourced as well. Doesn't mean their particularly satisfying proof, or particually elegant, 10,000 special cases does not really flip my mathematical switch. Classification of simple groups does have a more elagant result, and deeper consequeces. Wilke's proof for Fermat, and the more interesting underlying conjecture, though long, is much more elagant, and more to the point much deeper opening up a whole new field.
End of the day, its another one of the typical stuff we get in the press. Nothing much new here. This debate on four colour theorem's computer proof has been around for a good while now, and mathematics has for the most part gone on as normal.
Where I really need my spelling checker is in this form right here. I know my spelling is bad, I know I'm lazy (or is that dyslexic), but I would like to submit a correctly spelt post and a spelling checker in slashdot could be great.
Two ways this do this. Either, after a preview run the text through Ispell and print the mistakes. Or, build a spell checker into the web browser so that I can spell check every form I type it.
Don't confuse them. Don't even mention difference between sample and population it will only confuse. Dont mention difference between N or N-1 more confusion.
What have the kids learnt. That standard deviation gives a measure of spread of data. High sd big spread, low sd small spread.
It does not sould like much, but it will equip them some vague idea of the terms should them come across it in the future.
Some times yes, some times no.
At the FE college I work at computers are a very useful tool. I've been teaching a module on statistics and computers have been a very useful tool. Perhaps the two leasons the students really undersood the best were workshop sesions where we did some stats using excel. Typeing =stdev(A1:A10) helped them understand the meaning of standard deviation much better than an hour long session on the subject with board work and exercises.
Maybe it depends on the learners perfered way of working. Some students can handle abstractions like integration well (indeed its one of the marks of a good mathematician). However for many students filling the board with symbols will do nothing but confuse. For these students seeing direct feedback from their work will provide motivation and aid understanding.
Another important question is what are the aims of the teaching process. Are these just narrow aims like the Reading, Writing and Arithmatic mentioned in the article or preparing students for the world. Education today is far more than just this very narrow set of criteria.
Of course computers should not be a replacement for teachers. They are just another tool in a teachers toolkit to be used when appropriate. Its still early days as the education sector learns how best to use them. Electronic whiteboards are appearing everywhere, but I've rarely seem them used well, (the most fun I've had with a white board was displaying 3D models mathematical surfaces which allowed you to rotate them which your hand. True tactile computing).
I'd love to see a move towards better computer resources for teaching. So much is posible but so littles been done. Perhaps open-source/open content ideas could work in education with some schemes to combine teachers talents and really aid teaching.
The two basic problems are sanitation and security.
Both of which cost money. So the sharing is not cost free. Following the article you could say the this is the economic reason why the sharing of office space does not happen.
Its very dificult to say anything on this matter. There are so many factors which make it harder for women to go up the maths ladder. From school with a host of curtural preasures and expetations onwards. The social/curtural effect probably swamp any natural ability.
OK so not the best interview, but don't diss Ben so much. As a Ph.D sutudent he has probably spent three years full time research on spyware, has copiled some good resources on funding of spyware, has been an expert witness in a legal case against gator. So does maybe know a bit more on this issue than your average slashdotter.
Theres pluses and minuses with each approach. Have a read of the folksonomies article which once you get to the core was not to dificult to understand.
Lets compare the Hamilton example in both Concise Britanica and Wikipedia
First off in wikipedia you get the full article, rather than a shorter article and a sales pitch. Thats the main problem with britanica, its not part of the free internet. It's content is only for those prepared to pay. Well I want a resource that I can point my friends, family and colegues to. Britanica does not cut it.
I was not sure which 'Hamilton' Robert McHenry was refering to. Of more interest to me was William Hamilton the mathematician, creator of the quatornians. I can read something about him on wikipedia, but not in Britanica.
Maybe a better comparision is with other free internet sources. I'd trust the reliability of wikipedia far more than any other source on the internet.
And the date issue, is now fixed! How quickly could an error in Britanica be fixed? Seems like these monkeys are pretty quick off the ball.
Wikipedia got a nicer picture!
Britanica, consistantly times out. Wheres the 'reliability' in that.
I think Robert McHenry is disingenious, his whole article revolves around one bug, and the usual unfounded critiques of open source. Anyone in software knows how easy it is to find a bug. One bug does not make a useless bit of software or resource. The article seems like the typical rubishing piece, put out by another orginization feeling threatened buy this 'open' stuff.
I was quite supried to see how small in terms of line count the Java solution was. I was expecting to see a much higher disparity between the lisp like solutions and more standard languages.
This reminds me of way back (mid 80's) when Lotus 1,2,3 (a speadsheet) was heralded as a way to program without code. We can see from that that certain aspects of programming were made irrelivant. I suspect that we will see a continuation of the trend as more and more aspects which used to be in the programmers domain get automated and others where skills which were originally a programmers bread and butter become the domain of other professions. (Say web page design was originally a programmers task - no longer!).
From what I've read there is a case that there is real Junk in the DNA. Various sequences which at some point in the past served a purpose but now (like the human apendix) the original function is no longer relavant. I've also read somewhere that some of the DNA is actually a sort of virus which eons ago colanised the DNA sequence.
From Junk DNA
The first of these seem to indicate a posibility of real junk.
Now do you know whether the overloading of + for some third party number objects is actually going to cause a clone to take place or not?
The method I always use for similar problems is to pre define all my object and uses methods where one of the arguments (say the first) is the result object.
To my mind heavy numerics is precisely where you wish to avoid using a complicated mechanism like overloading.
Time to read up on macro economics. How presidents make or destroy jobs:
- Change corperate tax rates. If a buisness has to
pay higer taxes they need to cut costs somewhere else, often by
fireing workers.
- Implement policies which affect interest rates. High interest rates mean companies pay more on loans, less for the workers.
- Implement policies which affect international exchange rates. Seen how the pound-doler rate has gone sky high this year, from about 1.5 to 1.8.
That means it costs more to import, exports are cheeper. The doller is very week at the moment indicating little faith in US econonmy by international finance.
- Want better employees, put more money into education!
- Want heathier employees, put money into health!
- Sort out your budget deficit! The US is a bad place to invest in right now. You have gone way over budget.
- Fair tax rates. Bush's policies have given much bigger tax breaks to the well off than the working population. Means the average man on the street
has less in his pocket, so less to spend, hence depresses the economy,
depressed economy means less jobs!
- Bomb the hell out of a country, rig the system so that US companies get the prime rebuilding contract = more jobs.
Thats just for starters. Its a very complicated with many interrelations. For instance the UK economy has done very well in the last few years due to good economic policies like counter-cyclic investment. The one thing you can say is that probably every policy will somehow affect the number of unemployed.Disclaimer, I'm from the UK so I don't know which instruments like setting the base interest rate are available. Practically all I know about the sorry state of your economy I've learnt from playing bushgame www.bushgame.com which I'd recomend to all.
This type of game might just be where the open source movement comes in. A good niche market, and more to the point creating an environment for other hobbyiest to share their work. Makes me think of my past life as a model railway enthuist, it would be great to have system where I could build my own model of the "flying scotsman" and share it with other likeminded folk. Theres a whole geek army out there who would like to do the same. Maybe its a CPAN for model railway fans.
Forget trying to make the next killer game, go for your obscure interests, the corperates have not got the breath for that.
I've reciently come across a fork of wikipedia wikiinfo. How do you feel about this, good thing, bad thing? Does it indicate signs of problems in wikipedia?
Wow it was kind of a shock seeing those budget deficit figures. Has the US really messed up that badly!
As for taxes there is a famous quote from Plato: Its imposible for a society to be "fair", "free", and "equal". The argument funs something like: Parental love causes the fundamental paradox of politics: no society can be simultaneously fair, free and equal. If it is fair, people who work harder will accumulate more. If it is free, people will give their wealth to their children. But then it cannot be equal, for some people will inherit wealth they did not earn. Ever since Plato called attention to these tradeoffs in 'The Republic', most political ideologies can be defined by the stance they take on which of these ideals should yield. A quote by Steven Pinkner from http://homepage.eircom.net/~odyssey/Politics/Liber ty/Society.html
You can trace the whole idea of redistributive taxes as a way to promote the "equals" side of things. Abandon this an inequality rises, and eventually the proles revolt!
As ever you ammericans are behind the times on this! The Guardian published a similar article a couple of months back: The Role of Play.
My personal favorite idea for a political game would be a god game with the whole world instead of a city. You would play the UN,WTO and other global orginisations. Missions might be things like: "Feed the world", "Eliminate Poverty", "Stop Climate Change" but I've a feeling these might be a bit tricky.
I'm suprised no one has mentioned BitPass this is quite a mature micropayment system, the first one Scot MacCloud (of online comic fame) though good enough.
I already pay for internet access; why would I want to, or should I have to, pay for something which is currently free? So why do the ISP's get the internet dolars? Surely content providers deserve some slice of the cake.
As a very skint content provider, I actually think that I'm out compeating myself. We provide an online and highly rated database of information about plants, and also an offline version for sale. But hardly anyone want to actually buy the data as its free online. Sometimes I feel like just withdrawing the online version to boost sales. A good micropayment system could help keep such services online, indeed it might even stimulate more higher quality information on the internet.
Why publish for free?
IE is a browser with no soul. I want it to be Mozilla because I think that people who care deserve a browser with a soul. I was unaware that a soul was a new feature in Mozilla. Does it mean that it will automatically be downloading old Mowtown tunes? Or maybe its a new name for content filtering so we only see site which are good for us. So whats this soul do. Users need to know?
Several years ago I remaped Caps Lock to Shift on my Win98 box. Great for me as it stops my sentances coming out in CAPS by mistake. However, it does seem to confuse kids and computer newbies; for some reason they find it conceptually easier to hit the caps lock key and then type a capital letter rather than hitting shift and the letter they want at same time. It does allow 1 finger typing and says what it does Caps Lock -> capitals, for a newbie what does "shift" mean, shift my chair?
With that comes, I assume, the expectation that every possible free tract of land had a windmill farm stuck on it. Nope, current US capacity = 6,374 MW (American Wind Energy Association) so a 200 fold increase, a big increase but from a very low baseline.
Wind power just doesn't cut it: reason being for one that it can't provide power all the time, and can't provide power when the wind is too slow or too hard.
True, but wind power is just one form of alternative energy. When you consider a multi-source system the the fact that one part is not producing at one time has less effect.
The greatest strain on the systems happens during peek demands say the advert break in Friends when everyone puts the kettle on. Neither wind power or nuclear can provide the "instant on" needed to meet peek demand. I'm aware of two different means of meeting this, coal/gas/oil fired stations which can be switched on quickly and an interesting hydro scheme I've seen in Wales (UK). The station has two large lakes, one at the top of a hill and one at the bottom. During times of low demand excess power in the system is used to pump water up the hill. At peek demand water flows down again powering generators.
And to boot, it's way more expensive than any other from of energy except solar.
Costs are going down as research improves. Theres been precious little money put into research of alternative energy sources, in UK its only about a tenth of research money in atomics. Yes they are a bit more 3.7 p/KWh as opposed to 2.5p/KWh but in the same ball park. (from Uranium Information Centre Ltd). Capital costs are less, decomisioning costs are less. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the risk of default on these loans [for new nuclear stations] is "very high--well above 50 percent." CBO also states that a new nuclear plant would be "uneconomic to operate because of its high construction costs relative to other electricity generation sources." The Congressional Research Service estimates the loan guarantees will cost between $14 and $16 billion. (from Friends of the Earth).
Solar. Has its place, basically two form; water heating; and ecletricity generating. Small scale water heeting can be very cheep, one old radiator, painted black, a few pipes and a pump. Can pre-heat your water reducing energy needed. Solar cells are an expensive solution and not very eco friendly considerning all the harmful effects of chip manfacture.
At the project I work on all our electricity needs come from wind and solar. A large battery bank provides backup storage for when its either not sunny, or not windy. Then again our electricity needs are small, laptops and a few lights.
Tidal. A very young technology. like reducing tides, or maybe removing so much energy from the ocean tides that certain ocean streams will stop/reverse/whatever. How much energy would tidal power consume? Very much less than the oceans produced, consider the energy from moving 1000km*1000km*1km of water back and forth twice a day! Yes there may be local effects but it won't make a dent in the global picture. There are some very exciting tidal solutions. New scientist reciently did a good review.
Small scale hydro. A few centries ago water mills ground most of the corn in the UK. Put some moden plants where the old mills were and thats a lot of energy.
Energy crops. A big push in the UK for growing energy crops at the moment. Basically carbon neutral. Short rotation willow coppice and certain grasses are used. Bio-gas, and bio-diesal can be produced. A lot of Brasils cars are run on suger cane.
Energy conservation. Most cost effective solution is actually to reduce energy demand. Loft insulation, low energy bulbs, more efficient fridges all help.
Pasive Solar. Theres a school in Liverpool (not noted for its sun) which is entirely heated by pasive solar. Smart building design with lots of south facing windows and thermal storage (say by storing water underground) can make a cost effective solution.
Combined Heat and Power. The idea here is that waste heat from electricity generation is used for heating. At Live
This is very far from the truth. They have almost complete editorial independance, and are often our biggest critic of the govenment. Comparisions with a 1984 style department of truth hold no water. Witness the Kelly Afair.