I was at a talk by Stephen Cook once and he actually set proving P != NP or P = NP as an undergrad student project. Shows people then didn't fully appreciate how difficult it was. Perhaps he spent a week trying to solve it and felt close enough to be sure it could be done.
I do know that in Scotland they call their first degree a Master's degree from tradition.
A few Scottish universities call their first arts degrees "MAs" (the "ancient" ones: Edinburgh, Glasgow, St. Andrews). You have the absurd situation that a (probably harder) degree in a science or other subject gets you a BSc whereas an arts degree gets you an MA.
I don't really agree with this. Up until children reach a certain level (perhaps their last few years before leaving school) I think that we should endeavour to keep them at the same standard in all core subjects. Otherwise you could have situation where they race away in certain subjects and neglect others. It's hard to deny them the opportunity of further study in their good subjects even if this means they never reach a decent standard in others, but does this need to be done under the school umbrella?
A direct link to file in a Linux-playable format!
on
Donald Knuth On NPR
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Although computer malfunctions remain the most common cause of file loss, data recovery experts say human behaviour still is to blame in many cases.
This "statistic" just sounds plain wrong based on my personal experience, as I've only one lost data by malfunction, but on many occasions I have accidentally deleted something.
Can anyone confirm or deny that malfunction is the most common cause?
I suppose another thing that might be advantageous for all (not just parents) is that the park could take quite an abstract view of people's whereabouts in the park; just dots from a bird's eye view. That way they could watch crowd problems happening and take action to stop any dangerous crowd phenomena, or try to ease large queues by suggesting that people try one of the less busy attractions.
OK, I not a die-hard libertarian, but this seems like a good idea. This is not the same as tracking someone's movements all the time, as a theme park is ostensibly not the real world. It should stop kids from being getting lost; and it would save school and youth organisation groups from having to hammer around in those big chain gangs with flags, etc.
Some of the storage space figures being bandied around are so outlandish that it wouldn't surprise me if someone trumps them all by offering free unlimited storage space (perhaps they already have).
They can always boot people from the service if they use too much space anyway.:-)
We've done enough (I'm from Toronto) to screw up the environment around this city, we should NOT be doing this!
It may be true that much has been done to screw up the environment, and this isn't peculiar to Toronto I'm sure. Things like this are a tradeoff between functionality (which people simply won't allow to go backwards) and environmental good. This seems to be environmentally preferable to petrol powered air conditioning and with similar results, so I think it's a good thing even if it isn't perfect./P
so basically they want to stack the chips? umm, heat?
It has to be said, I think that if Sun are seriously thinking of producing such chips then it must be a moderately good idea (they're not monkeys after all), so I wouldn't write it off on the basis of heat concerns.
The first typewriters actually had properly sized keys, but they discovered that an unfortunate degree of jamming would occur as efficient typists would outpace the little hammers with the letters on them!... and they settled on shrinking the keys, which slowed down even the best typists to an acceptable 50-60WPM
Isn't the whole QUERTY design supposed to increase the mean distance between subsequent key presses, to slow people down to avoid jamming the keyboards, but we've just stuck with it for consistency?
I'm glad that I got something right, I was quite embarrassed that I posted such an poorly worded message in the first place that I had to correct it this way.
Yes, you're quite right, I probably shouldn't have put it in such broad terms. Although I didn't claim that it would be optimal, or that you would know it was optimal.
I suppose though that there might be a theoretical upper bound on the performance of a design (think about a spaceship, once you're close to c you're doing demonstratably well), so you at least know how close you are to the very best design
There is a, IIRC, recently formed Linux user group in Iraq:
http://www.iraqilinux.org/
IMHO it's a good change for open source to make an impact if Iraq's public services are going to have the opportunity to make a fresh start on handover.
The sad thing is that however strong and well supported the laws are by the community, it's probably not going to make one bit of difference to the amount of crap an individual receives.
For a start, UK laws can't stop foreign spammers.
Secondly, they are likely to be difficult to enforce even if we know who the culprits are. We have drug laws and anti-terrorism laws in Britain, but does that mean that they are no longer a problem? I think not.
IMHO the best way to avoid spam is to take precautions and get some good filters.
What relevance is there to say that someone is the "inventor" of Linux since Linux is not an invention.
If they had said that Linus Torvalds is not the "originator", "creator", "maintainer" or suchlike of Linux then there would be something to argue about.
What if you had to come up with something completely original to get any credit for it?
Invent: To produce or contrive (something previously unknown) by the use of ingenuity or imagination.
I think there will be a new mirror sponsored by the same organisation. However mirror.ac.uk are deleting all their content as we speak I believe, which isn't a problem in itself but some of that content cannot be found elsewhere easily.
It's a shame that they couldn't have been a little more organised in order to change providers seamlessly. It seems that the only people who _don't_ have access to the current mirror are going to be the new mirror providers!
"In many ways, Yahoo's main rival is Google, started five years ago by two brainy Stanford graduate students who believed, against conventional wisdom, that sophisticated computer science could produce better Web searches."
I don't know about anyone else, but CS would be the first place I would look to for search technology. In the department I'm in these is a section called Information Retrieval which seem to be mostly concerned with this type of thing. Surely things haven't changed too much since Google came along.
Slashdot Mirror
I was at a talk by Stephen Cook once and he actually set proving P != NP or P = NP as an undergrad student project. Shows people then didn't fully appreciate how difficult it was. Perhaps he spent a week trying to solve it and felt close enough to be sure it could be done.
I do know that in Scotland they call their first degree a Master's degree from tradition.
A few Scottish universities call their first arts degrees "MAs" (the "ancient" ones: Edinburgh, Glasgow, St. Andrews). You have the absurd situation that a (probably harder) degree in a science or other subject gets you a BSc whereas an arts degree gets you an MA.
I don't really agree with this. Up until children reach a certain level (perhaps their last few years before leaving school) I think that we should endeavour to keep them at the same standard in all core subjects. Otherwise you could have situation where they race away in certain subjects and neglect others. It's hard to deny them the opportunity of further study in their good subjects even if this means they never reach a decent standard in others, but does this need to be done under the school umbrella?
Here is the interview in MP3:
http://www.cfconline.co.uk/knuth.mp3
Although computer malfunctions remain the most common cause of file loss, data recovery experts say human behaviour still is to blame in many cases.
This "statistic" just sounds plain wrong based on my personal experience, as I've only one lost data by malfunction, but on many occasions I have accidentally deleted something.Can anyone confirm or deny that malfunction is the most common cause?
[Someone had to say it]
So presumably they need to read your "ham" too, that's slightly worrying.
Also, one man's newsletter is another man's spam.
I suppose another thing that might be advantageous for all (not just parents) is that the park could take quite an abstract view of people's whereabouts in the park; just dots from a bird's eye view. That way they could watch crowd problems happening and take action to stop any dangerous crowd phenomena, or try to ease large queues by suggesting that people try one of the less busy attractions.
OK, I not a die-hard libertarian, but this seems like a good idea. This is not the same as tracking someone's movements all the time, as a theme park is ostensibly not the real world. It should stop kids from being getting lost; and it would save school and youth organisation groups from having to hammer around in those big chain gangs with flags, etc.
Some of the storage space figures being bandied around are so outlandish that it wouldn't surprise me if someone trumps them all by offering free unlimited storage space (perhaps they already have).
:-)
They can always boot people from the service if they use too much space anyway.
We've done enough (I'm from Toronto) to screw up the environment around this city, we should NOT be doing this!
It may be true that much has been done to screw up the environment, and this isn't peculiar to Toronto I'm sure. Things like this are a tradeoff between functionality (which people simply won't allow to go backwards) and environmental good. This seems to be environmentally preferable to petrol powered air conditioning and with similar results, so I think it's a good thing even if it isn't perfect./P
so basically they want to stack the chips? umm, heat?
It has to be said, I think that if Sun are seriously thinking of producing such chips then it must be a moderately good idea (they're not monkeys after all), so I wouldn't write it off on the basis of heat concerns.
The first typewriters actually had properly sized keys, but they discovered that an unfortunate degree of jamming would occur as efficient typists would outpace the little hammers with the letters on them! ... and they settled on shrinking the keys, which slowed down even the best typists to an acceptable 50-60WPM
Isn't the whole QUERTY design supposed to increase the mean distance between subsequent key presses, to slow people down to avoid jamming the keyboards, but we've just stuck with it for consistency?
With radical new ideas like this the software old-guard must be Bricklin it!
Serisouly, there are millions of lists out there, and there are about as many different interests that people can have.
True enough, but how many Linux mailing lists are there, and can I read all of them? I think not. I just wanted some pointers to cut out the crap.
I know that it's not supported, but does anyone have any idea what I can do with my Evo with Linux on it?
Can I check the memory on this somehow and get a new module if necessary?
I'm glad that I got something right, I was quite embarrassed that I posted such an poorly worded message in the first place that I had to correct it this way.
Yes, you're quite right, I probably shouldn't have put it in such broad terms. Although I didn't claim that it would be optimal, or that you would know it was optimal.
I suppose though that there might be a theoretical upper bound on the performance of a design (think about a spaceship, once you're close to c you're doing demonstratably well), so you at least know how close you are to the very best design
I'd rather not think of the method as brute force.
Well said. Brute force would be enumerating every possible optical fibre and then testing them.
This method is more subtle and converges to a close-to-optimal solution with less computer power having to be applied.
Will we see a new era of game compatibilty?
Yes, as soon as games are compatible with platforms other than Windows, not before.
There is a, IIRC, recently formed Linux user group in Iraq: http://www.iraqilinux.org/ IMHO it's a good change for open source to make an impact if Iraq's public services are going to have the opportunity to make a fresh start on handover.
The sad thing is that however strong and well supported the laws are by the community, it's probably not going to make one bit of difference to the amount of crap an individual receives. For a start, UK laws can't stop foreign spammers. Secondly, they are likely to be difficult to enforce even if we know who the culprits are. We have drug laws and anti-terrorism laws in Britain, but does that mean that they are no longer a problem? I think not. IMHO the best way to avoid spam is to take precautions and get some good filters.
What relevance is there to say that someone is the "inventor" of Linux since Linux is not an invention.
If they had said that Linus Torvalds is not the "originator", "creator", "maintainer" or suchlike of Linux then there would be something to argue about.
What if you had to come up with something completely original to get any credit for it?
Invent: To produce or contrive (something previously unknown) by the use of ingenuity or imagination.
I think there will be a new mirror sponsored by the same organisation. However mirror.ac.uk are deleting all their content as we speak I believe, which isn't a problem in itself but some of that content cannot be found elsewhere easily.
It's a shame that they couldn't have been a little more organised in order to change providers seamlessly. It seems that the only people who _don't_ have access to the current mirror are going to be the new mirror providers!
Will .NET cause a convergence of binary programs to this one standard?
.NET CIL be the end of cross-platform binary incompatibility?
Could forcing the huge catalogue of traditionally Microsoft-only software to
"In many ways, Yahoo's main rival is Google, started five years ago by two brainy Stanford graduate students who believed, against conventional wisdom, that sophisticated computer science could produce better Web searches."
I don't know about anyone else, but CS would be the first place I would look to for search technology. In the department I'm in these is a section called Information Retrieval which seem to be mostly concerned with this type of thing. Surely things haven't changed too much since Google came along.