Another issue that slightly complicates things is the fact that the 360 signs you in to XBox live by default when you have an active network connection
It complicates the issue for about 5 seconds until you disable auto sign-in.
Show me where I invoked a belief in scientific "law"?
You call it the "law of gravity".
As for rocks that are part of a three-body (or many-body problem), you happen to be living on one --- and people have been able to predict solar and lunar eclipses with decent accuracy, for centuries before computers were invented. Many-body systems can certainly be chaotic, but they do not have to be. And how do you suppose NASA predicts the trajectory of objects and satellites in space?
With a satellite orbiting the earth, the mass of the satellite is negligable and therefore doesn't enter into the equation - the earth and sun experience no significant gravitational pull from the satellite. The n-body system of our solar system is indeed chaotic, it's just that the gravitational forces exerted by most of the bodies on each other are very small when compared to the massive gravitational pull of the sun (and the planet nearest them, for moons), and on the relatively small timescales (astronomically speaking) involved it's possible to predict with useful accuracy the positions of the planets, moons, etc. A good quote from the Wikipedia link I gave before: "A major study of the Earth-Moon-Sun system was undertaken by Charles Delaunay, who published two volumes on the topic, each of 900 pages in length, in 1860 and 1867. Among many other accomplishments, the work already hints at chaos, and clearly demonstrates the problem of so-called "small denominators" in perturbation theory."
I don't claim very great insights myself, never having specialized in it. Some important things to grasp: Sets of equations can show chaotic behavior for some combinations of input parameters, and not for others.
I tried to talk in general terms, rather than getting into specifics like that. One obvious example of this is the three body problem with a pendulum and two magnets- start the pendulum close enough to one magnet, and it predictably settles on that magnet, but in other regions it is completely unpredictable. The deterministic and chaotic areas can be seen in this image: http://www.ituniv.se/~joli/img/pendulum.gif
And crucially, systems can be chaotic and deterministic simultaneously but on different (time) scales; stock exchange rates are a well-known example. Coastlines are another; we all know that the coastline of an island goes entirely around it, but on shorter stretches the shape tends to have the characteristics of a chaotic system.
On what time scale are stock exchange rates deterministic? Your 'coastlines' example doesn't make much sense - have you confused the example self-similarity of a coastline with it being "a chaotic system"? I don't think anyone would say that the coastline of an island is deterministic because it "goes entirely around it" - the going "entirely around it" is part of the definition of an island.
Yes, on some scales (of time and place) these exhibit chaotic behavior. But by no means on all.
Again, on what timescale does the earth's climate appear to be deterministic? You can go back hundreds of millions of years and it still fluctuates wildly.
There are some highly predictable structures in climate, such as the effects of solar cycles and Milankovitch cycles.
I don't think even Milankovitch would say that the effects of these cycles are highly predictable- certainly the eccentricity, precession, etc. of the Earth is predictable, but these cycles don't completely match the data. Part of the argument for anthropogenic global warming is the feedback loop where temperature increases cause an increase in the C02 produced by organisms, which cause temperature to increase. If that doesn't sound like an unpredictable non-linear system I don't know what does.
[Greenland] was green, merely a few centuries ago.
Did someone mention Greenland yet again?
Not that it proves anything, but his point was perfectly valid, he should have qualified it a little better, however: "Greenland was greener, merely a few centuries ago."
None of that, however, changes the fact that I can actually predict with quite reasonable accuracy that the stone will hit the ground
Although overly simplistic, your example demonstrates a blind unshakeable belief in a scientific _Law_ (as you call it, but no scientist worthy of the name would). To see where this so-called 'Law' was found to break down around 100 years ago, go read up on Einstein's special theory of relativity. Scientists can be 'wrong', even great Nobel prize-winning scientists. This is a natural part of science. There are no Laws, only Theories. These theories use models that can be refined or refuted at any time in the future.
A better example involving stones and gravity would be The three body problem. Given the three bodies initial positions and trajectories, and even accurate data on their recent movements, shouldn't it be possible to predict where they will be in a few minutes time? Why not create a computer model that "knows _all_ of the factors" and their relative influence- then trumpet the assumed success of our computer model, and spout on about how those who doubt the future positions of the bodies are DENIERS! To do this wouldd be entirely wrong, as this problem is an example of a chaotic system- no matter how accurate our measurements of the initial state we can't predict the result with 100% certainty.
The earth's weather systems are chaotic, and we haven't had much success historically predicting those more than a few days (or sometimes hours) into the future, even with powerful computers, advanced models, and accurate measurements. Global climate predictions are effectively long term global weather forecasts- if they don't work for next week, why believe that they can predict 10 or 30 years into the future?
Yes, humans do have an impact on global weather and climate - our mere existence and respiration has had at least as much influence as that of any other species (e.g. Butterflies, to resurrect that overused example). I'm all for reducing the impact that humans have on this planet in any way possible, but allowing ourselves to be misled by bad science, over-assumptions, and blind belief in computer models is just wrong.
I think you have read part of this thread and misunderstood the point. While my terminology may not have been perfect, the point that I was making is valid. I stated that it is not possible to determine the intervals of a melody by only seeing positions on a stave without knowing which clef should be used with that stave.
You could pick up a used Sidekick or last-gen Treo or Blackberry pretty cheaply on Ebay- just don't use the phone or email and you've got a great cheap messaging platform. You can even find a brand new Nokia 6822 there for about US$100 - pretty much the smallest package that you'll find with a QWERTY keyboard.
Actually... I guy I know who had never eaten vegemite in his life before (immigrant parents) and was sent to get some vegemite-on-turkish-toast for his boss's breakfast (I have that kind of job). He was so entranced by the smell that he tried some and is now a regular consumer.
Perhaps there's a genetic component to enjoying salted yeast extract that has been overlooked for all these years, in addition to the typical route of environmental exposure...
Perhaps you are in fact thinking of Promite? Vegemite is much harsher than Marmite.
I'm talking about the British Marmite with a yellow lid that's been made for over 100 years. You're probably referring to the Australian Marmite with a red lid that I've never had, but by all accounts is a completely unrelated and inferior product. Here are pictures of both jars:
Britsh Marmite is unsweetened, and way stronger than Vegemite. I actually quite like Vegemite because I can use more of it, I have to spread Marmite about 1 micron thick on my toast.
You made the textbook mistake and tried it after the age of 5. It's a well known fact that if the taste isn't acquired in early childhood you'll never like it. Oh, and don't spread it thick like jam either; there's a reason why most people buy it in very small jars.
Once you have the taste for it, there's nothing like butter and marmite on toast for a hangover.
For those of you who are from Australia; Vegemite is a watered down, sweetened copy of the British product Marmite (there's an Australian 'Marmite' too, but it's even worse than Vegemite). Do yourselves a favour and try some Marmite.
"They also make the vast assumption that the angels are pointing to a treble clef, when there are many others such as the C clef and bass clef that were more common in the 15th Century."
That's true, but it doesn't matter since the relative spacing between the notes is the same. So the key moves up or down but the melody remains the same.
True, once you've got the intervals you have the melody, moving it up or down just changes the key. But the intervals between a given pair of lines on the stave differ depending on the clef, so using the stave as evidence for a particular interval depends on knowing which clef to use. For example, the top space and top line in the treble clef denote 'E' and 'F', which differ by a semitone (there is no accidental E sharp/F flat between them). The top space and line on the Bass clef are 'G' and 'A', which differ by a whole tone (there is a G sharp / A flat between them).
They labelled the notes on the stave, as if it used the treble clef- I'm not an expert in music theory by any means but even I can see this as an amateurish error. The assumption they've made looks even worse when you consider that 4-line staves were more common then, and the F and C clefs were in far more common usage. Someone with a little musical knowledge today looks at 5 lines and thinks "treble clef: EGBDF", but show 5 lines to a musician from the middle ages and that' the last combination that would spring to mind.
Sorry to be a spoilsport, but this whole thing seems highly speculative.
The matching between the Cymatic patterns and the carvings is tenuous at best- is it just me, or does the Cymatic pattern at 2:54 in the video look _nothing_ like the carving it fades to? In addition, for this technique to have any validity, they would either have to know the plate size used by the composers or demonstrate that the Cymatics are unaffected by the size and thickness of the plate, which I doubt.
They also make the vast assumption that the angels are pointing to a treble clef, when there are many others such as the C clef and bass clef that were more common in the 15th Century.
Even if they decoded the tones correctly they give any explanation as to how they discovered the timing of the piece, or was this just 'to make it sound cool' like the random vocals that they added?
Sounds like someone had this at the back of their mind for 20-odd years and then they read the Da Vinci Code and saw a way to make a quick $.
Traditionally, when an app crashes because of an invalid document, it's writing to some memory it shouldn't be.
It could also crash because of a divide by zero, null pointer dereference, etc. No memory problems in these cases. Could be a sign of lazy programming, or just a misguided sense of 'improving performance' by not making 'unnecessary' checks.
We were discussing a computationally intensive game, Populous. The increase in CPU speed also gave the ST a small edge in 3D graphics, which the Amiga's custom hardware couldn't help with.
Surely the 3D graphics in Populous weren't 3D in anywhere near the same sense as we know them today - I thought it was isometric graphics, i.e., just pasting 2D graphic images onto the screen. And the Amiga's custom hardware certainly was good at that.
Yes, I agree. I was trying to make another point. I'll rephrase:
As well as being of some advantage for CPU-intensive tasks, the increase in CPU speed also gave the ST a small edge in other games such as Stunt Car Racer and Castle Master that used polygonal 3D graphics, which the Amiga's custom hardware couldn't help with.
Remember 'sprogging'? Raising a small section of land near your big buildings so that they'd shrink and create up a new person? They built it into Populous 2, I think you right-clicked on the house.
That may have been true on computationally-intense games
We were discussing a computationally intensive game, Populous. The increase in CPU speed also gave the ST a small edge in 3D graphics, which the Amiga's custom hardware couldn't help with. The ST's sound chip was humbled by the C64, let alone the Amiga.
The decision to get an ST for me was based on the available Hi-Res monitor which helped me justify it to my parents 'for school' (to be fair I did some pretty cool stuff with ProText and Calamus) and the fact that I knew a bunch of ST owners who supplied me with several 80-capacity disk boxes full of games.
A friend of mine who worked in a computer shop really did hook up an ST to an Amiga and get them to play Populous head to head.
Certainly the game [Populous] was best on the Amiga.
It was better on the ST- if you system linked an ST to an Amiga with a NULL modem cable the ST and let the CPUs battle, the won due to it's slightly faster CPU speed (8MHz compared to 7.09MHz (PAL)).
Not sure if anyone's mentioned this (browsing on my phone so not viewing all) but 2 monitors are more or less essential for debugging an app with a non-trivial UI. Nothing like the pain of trying to squash a debugger into 1/2 the screen.
They may have been afraid that it would be easy for Nintendo or MS to copy the concept for their systems once published.
They were terrified that in some unimaginable future, the Xbox 360 would have a universal Achievements system, and the Nintendo Wii would have customisable Avatars...
Should put the keypad and display on the card itself, it'd look like one of those 'credit card' calculators.
Re:Biggest problem: No Push Email
on
iPhone Roundup
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· Score: 1
The phone itself doesn't 'push' new emails, but it has to be capable of receiving pushed data. I'm not "gushing about Exchange", but having data synced to and from the phone via GPRS/3G is a killer feature, more important to me than the media player and the camera. Exchange contacts/events/tasks are not "specially formatted emails", it's more accurate to say that contacts, events, notes, and emails all use a common generic container- a MAPI message.
I should have been clearer- the screen will get greasy from people's fingers too. Using an on-screen phone keypad is not a novelty for me, and I try to avoid using my fingers directly for this reason. The TyTn slide-out keyboard is actually pretty good, although I really would like a dedicated numeric as well. Both the iPhone and the TyTn share the problem that you have to keep them in a case to avoid scratching/dirtying the screen.
Yes the TyTn is thicker and uglier than the iPhone, but I didn't buy it for it's looks- it's a usable, practical, released product. The iPhone is still vapourware. It might be fantastic, but just one serious design flaw could cripple it. Once it is actually available I'll evaluate it to see if it's a better product for my needs than the next wave of Blackberry/WinCE devices, and if it is I'll pick one up in an instant.
Re:Biggest problem: No Push Email
on
iPhone Roundup
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· Score: 1
OK, so no 'Enterprise-ready' push email. They are the people buying Blackberries and Pocket PCs. I couldn't find a reference to push email on Apple's website. Will it push contacts, calendar, and tasks too?
I like the phone's look, dislike the size (although it would double as a cricket bat), and dislike the lack of a keyboard (My HTC Tytn is smaller, has a touchscreen, and fits in a slide-out qwerty keyboard). Is that a "list of OMG's"? I think it'll sell well and make Apple money, but I won't buy one and I don't think there will be as many people in the mall holding greasy-screened bricks up to their ears as there are running around with white earbuds.
Slashdot Mirror
You call it the "law of gravity".
With a satellite orbiting the earth, the mass of the satellite is negligable and therefore doesn't enter into the equation - the earth and sun experience no significant gravitational pull from the satellite. The n-body system of our solar system is indeed chaotic, it's just that the gravitational forces exerted by most of the bodies on each other are very small when compared to the massive gravitational pull of the sun (and the planet nearest them, for moons), and on the relatively small timescales (astronomically speaking) involved it's possible to predict with useful accuracy the positions of the planets, moons, etc. A good quote from the Wikipedia link I gave before: "A major study of the Earth-Moon-Sun system was undertaken by Charles Delaunay, who published two volumes on the topic, each of 900 pages in length, in 1860 and 1867. Among many other accomplishments, the work already hints at chaos, and clearly demonstrates the problem of so-called "small denominators" in perturbation theory."
I tried to talk in general terms, rather than getting into specifics like that. One obvious example of this is the three body problem with a pendulum and two magnets- start the pendulum close enough to one magnet, and it predictably settles on that magnet, but in other regions it is completely unpredictable. The deterministic and chaotic areas can be seen in this image: http://www.ituniv.se/~joli/img/pendulum.gif
On what time scale are stock exchange rates deterministic? Your 'coastlines' example doesn't make much sense - have you confused the example self-similarity of a coastline with it being "a chaotic system"? I don't think anyone would say that the coastline of an island is deterministic because it "goes entirely around it" - the going "entirely around it" is part of the definition of an island.
Again, on what timescale does the earth's climate appear to be deterministic? You can go back hundreds of millions of years and it still fluctuates wildly.
I don't think even Milankovitch would say that the effects of these cycles are highly predictable- certainly the eccentricity, precession, etc. of the Earth is predictable, but these cycles don't completely match the data. Part of the argument for anthropogenic global warming is the feedback loop where temperature increases cause an increase in the C02 produced by organisms, which cause temperature to increase. If that doesn't sound like an unpredictable non-linear system I don't know what does.
Although overly simplistic, your example demonstrates a blind unshakeable belief in a scientific _Law_ (as you call it, but no scientist worthy of the name would). To see where this so-called 'Law' was found to break down around 100 years ago, go read up on Einstein's special theory of relativity. Scientists can be 'wrong', even great Nobel prize-winning scientists. This is a natural part of science. There are no Laws, only Theories. These theories use models that can be refined or refuted at any time in the future.
A better example involving stones and gravity would be The three body problem. Given the three bodies initial positions and trajectories, and even accurate data on their recent movements, shouldn't it be possible to predict where they will be in a few minutes time? Why not create a computer model that "knows _all_ of the factors" and their relative influence- then trumpet the assumed success of our computer model, and spout on about how those who doubt the future positions of the bodies are DENIERS! To do this wouldd be entirely wrong, as this problem is an example of a chaotic system- no matter how accurate our measurements of the initial state we can't predict the result with 100% certainty.
The earth's weather systems are chaotic, and we haven't had much success historically predicting those more than a few days (or sometimes hours) into the future, even with powerful computers, advanced models, and accurate measurements. Global climate predictions are effectively long term global weather forecasts- if they don't work for next week, why believe that they can predict 10 or 30 years into the future?
Yes, humans do have an impact on global weather and climate - our mere existence and respiration has had at least as much influence as that of any other species (e.g. Butterflies, to resurrect that overused example). I'm all for reducing the impact that humans have on this planet in any way possible, but allowing ourselves to be misled by bad science, over-assumptions, and blind belief in computer models is just wrong.
I think you have read part of this thread and misunderstood the point. While my terminology may not have been perfect, the point that I was making is valid. I stated that it is not possible to determine the intervals of a melody by only seeing positions on a stave without knowing which clef should be used with that stave.
You could pick up a used Sidekick or last-gen Treo or Blackberry pretty cheaply on Ebay- just don't use the phone or email and you've got a great cheap messaging platform. You can even find a brand new Nokia 6822 there for about US$100 - pretty much the smallest package that you'll find with a QWERTY keyboard.
I'm talking about the British Marmite with a yellow lid that's been made for over 100 years. You're probably referring to the Australian Marmite with a red lid that I've never had, but by all accounts is a completely unrelated and inferior product. Here are pictures of both jars:
http://images.google.com/images?q=marmite+austral
Britsh Marmite is unsweetened, and way stronger than Vegemite. I actually quite like Vegemite because I can use more of it, I have to spread Marmite about 1 micron thick on my toast.
You made the textbook mistake and tried it after the age of 5. It's a well known fact that if the taste isn't acquired in early childhood you'll never like it. Oh, and don't spread it thick like jam either; there's a reason why most people buy it in very small jars.
Once you have the taste for it, there's nothing like butter and marmite on toast for a hangover.
For those of you who are from Australia; Vegemite is a watered down, sweetened copy of the British product Marmite (there's an Australian 'Marmite' too, but it's even worse than Vegemite). Do yourselves a favour and try some Marmite.
They labelled the notes on the stave, as if it used the treble clef- I'm not an expert in music theory by any means but even I can see this as an amateurish error. The assumption they've made looks even worse when you consider that 4-line staves were more common then, and the F and C clefs were in far more common usage. Someone with a little musical knowledge today looks at 5 lines and thinks "treble clef: EGBDF", but show 5 lines to a musician from the middle ages and that' the last combination that would spring to mind.
Sorry to be a spoilsport, but this whole thing seems highly speculative.
The matching between the Cymatic patterns and the carvings is tenuous at best- is it just me, or does the Cymatic pattern at 2:54 in the video look _nothing_ like the carving it fades to? In addition, for this technique to have any validity, they would either have to know the plate size used by the composers or demonstrate that the Cymatics are unaffected by the size and thickness of the plate, which I doubt.
They also make the vast assumption that the angels are pointing to a treble clef, when there are many others such as the C clef and bass clef that were more common in the 15th Century.
Even if they decoded the tones correctly they give any explanation as to how they discovered the timing of the piece, or was this just 'to make it sound cool' like the random vocals that they added?
Sounds like someone had this at the back of their mind for 20-odd years and then they read the Da Vinci Code and saw a way to make a quick $.
As well as being of some advantage for CPU-intensive tasks, the increase in CPU speed also gave the ST a small edge in other games such as Stunt Car Racer and Castle Master that used polygonal 3D graphics, which the Amiga's custom hardware couldn't help with.
Remember 'sprogging'? Raising a small section of land near your big buildings so that they'd shrink and create up a new person? They built it into Populous 2, I think you right-clicked on the house.
We were discussing a computationally intensive game, Populous. The increase in CPU speed also gave the ST a small edge in 3D graphics, which the Amiga's custom hardware couldn't help with. The ST's sound chip was humbled by the C64, let alone the Amiga.
The decision to get an ST for me was based on the available Hi-Res monitor which helped me justify it to my parents 'for school' (to be fair I did some pretty cool stuff with ProText and Calamus) and the fact that I knew a bunch of ST owners who supplied me with several 80-capacity disk boxes full of games.
A friend of mine who worked in a computer shop really did hook up an ST to an Amiga and get them to play Populous head to head.
Not sure if anyone's mentioned this (browsing on my phone so not viewing all) but 2 monitors are more or less essential for debugging an app with a non-trivial UI. Nothing like the pain of trying to squash a debugger into 1/2 the screen.
... can someone just put a bullet in this corporation and put it out of it's misery. Watching it die like this is just painful.
Should put the keypad and display on the card itself, it'd look like one of those 'credit card' calculators.
The phone itself doesn't 'push' new emails, but it has to be capable of receiving pushed data. I'm not "gushing about Exchange", but having data synced to and from the phone via GPRS/3G is a killer feature, more important to me than the media player and the camera. Exchange contacts/events/tasks are not "specially formatted emails", it's more accurate to say that contacts, events, notes, and emails all use a common generic container- a MAPI message.
I should have been clearer- the screen will get greasy from people's fingers too. Using an on-screen phone keypad is not a novelty for me, and I try to avoid using my fingers directly for this reason. The TyTn slide-out keyboard is actually pretty good, although I really would like a dedicated numeric as well. Both the iPhone and the TyTn share the problem that you have to keep them in a case to avoid scratching/dirtying the screen.
Yes the TyTn is thicker and uglier than the iPhone, but I didn't buy it for it's looks- it's a usable, practical, released product. The iPhone is still vapourware. It might be fantastic, but just one serious design flaw could cripple it. Once it is actually available I'll evaluate it to see if it's a better product for my needs than the next wave of Blackberry/WinCE devices, and if it is I'll pick one up in an instant.
OK, so no 'Enterprise-ready' push email. They are the people buying Blackberries and Pocket PCs. I couldn't find a reference to push email on Apple's website. Will it push contacts, calendar, and tasks too?
I like the phone's look, dislike the size (although it would double as a cricket bat), and dislike the lack of a keyboard (My HTC Tytn is smaller, has a touchscreen, and fits in a slide-out qwerty keyboard). Is that a "list of OMG's"? I think it'll sell well and make Apple money, but I won't buy one and I don't think there will be as many people in the mall holding greasy-screened bricks up to their ears as there are running around with white earbuds.
If it didn't hitting 'pause' on a live stream and then 'play' several hours later would cause a noticable drop in quality.
Until then it can't hope compete with Windows Mobile, Palm, or Blackberry.