So this is only marginally on topic, but the story reminded me of a video I saw when I was a kid, I think featuring the Kraffts, that talked about a sulfuric lake caused by volcanic activity. I seem to recall the hosts of the video talking about someone's skin being eaten away by the acid in the lake, but I can't find anything on it in a quick google search. Has anyone else heard about this lake or this gruesome skin story? Now I've got the image in my head and I want to read more about it. I'm drawn to it like a train wreck. Well, a train carrying vats of sulfuric acid, at least.
3 notes:
1. $20 is a 2 bots at a single table, 2-3 tables running number.
2. It's also a peak hours number. I don't leave the account open 24/7, in part because real humans don't play all day long every day. I haven't run during other hours in a long time, but when I did I was making 50-75% what I make from 12AM-3AM.
3. The hotmail account is 4 years old and inactive. Maybe I don't want email from people on/. (and bots on/.) going to mit.edu and my relatively new and clean gmail account.
So the $20 an hour number would not be accurate for a single bot and it would certainly not hold over 24 hours. It comes from a $60 profit in 3 hours using multiple instances of the program. I'm sorry if my evil genius came off as absurd.
Cheers to the skeptics.
I've been using online poker as a means of making spending money for quite some time. When you play by the 'rules' (ie use mathematically sound strategies) you invariably make money. The biggest problem with the system is that you get bored playing the same game over and over for hours on end. It's a grind. You begin to take chances just to make the game more entertaining, and these chances can ruin your night's profit. For a while I simply stopped playing when I felt like I was getting fed up. I would also do homework or watch a movie and simply run the game in the background, stretching the amount of time I could keep my attention focused. Even then the temptation to deviate from my strategy would come quickly, and it would limit my ability to make what I consider an acceptable hourly wage. I never had much seed money, and always used my profits for movies and dining out, so I was limited to low stakes tables and would make $15-20 an hour. It doesn't take many mistakes at the end of a long night to eliminate those winnings
Some of my buddies at MIT and I have been operating a program like this for over a year now. We wrote the control algorithms ourselves based on our preferred play styles and fit them into a screen scanning program. The program is no better than any of us, but it has the advantage of being cold and methodical. We included code for an emergency stop so that if something went wrong we wouldn't lose all of our money, though it hasn't been an issue after the initial testing phase. I'm still uncomfortable about using the program for higher stakes games, but on a 50 cent/1 dollar Hold 'Em table at peak hours (discovered through trial and error) the program consistently makes about $20 an hour.
I'm not quite sure the black box was needed. Wouldn't the coroner's report make it evident that the guy was going way faster than the speed limit? That already proves he lied under questioning. The fact that he didn't hit the brakes should have been demonstrated by the lack of skid marks at the accident, right? So what did this box do that old fashioned detective work couldn't?
I agree that when he was sent into space he was basically a fighter jock, and had nothing to do with the scientific planning that went on. However, he did stay involved in space exploration even after he stopped flying, and I think that he's picked up a thing or two since then. His advocacy has been important to NASA, and he is probably the most recognized public figure to stand up for them.
Microwave radiation won't affect RFID. They are too small. Try nuking some ants and see what happens.
This guy seems to be closest to the target, I think. The reason ants don't fry is that the majority of the microwaves 'miss' them. The ant is smaller than the microwave wavelength (which varies between 10^-1 and 10^-4 meters), and so can miss the crests, so to speak, and avoid frying.
I think it fried all of the bills in the same spot because all of the bills had similar orientation and position, and Jackson's eye was right over a spot of peak intensity. Microwaves don't cook evenly; that's all he's demonstrated.
Most people, except for those who are quite into the game, don't have the attention span to watch people set up their bases etc.
Most people don't give a sports match their full attention. They might raptly watch the replays, they might focus more the game when it gets tense, but most people are hanging out with their friends at the same time, or eating, or switching between ESPN and CBS.
The way that televised sports cope with the monotony of the wait for action is with commentary. They'll step out of the game to give stats, a retired professional will give his take on the rookie at bat or the down just completed. Most people don't want to watch players set up their bases, but they also don't much care to watch the football players line up time and time again. Most soccer fans don't pay nearly as much attention when the ball is in midfield as they do when the players are poised for a shot on goal.
Conclusion 1: Game spectating needs to be something you can do in a group before it will catch on.
Conclusion 2: There needs to be a mechanism to give commentary and instant replays to the viewers.
Conclusion 3: Game spectating has to be flexible. It has to be something that you can give part of your divided attention to, not the sole activity of a few hours on a Sunday afternoon.
Ok... There seem to be a lot of misunderstandings about how this works. I'll see if I can clear some of them up. Much of the following is a simplification, so please don't flame me about technicalities. The on topic stuff is at the very bottom, the rest is background for those who want it.
What is a Virus? How does it work?
A virus is a protein sheath (called a capsid) covering genetic information. The protein sheath varies in size and shape, the most famous being the T4 Bacteriophage (picture on the bar on the left). Simply put, the genetic information can be in the form of RNA or DNA. The virus latches onto a host cell and injects its genetic material through the plasma membrane.
Viruses all have different strategies at this point, depending on their structure and target cells.
The most insidious, the retroviruses (of HIV fame), incorporate their genome into the host cell's. When the host cell copies its own DNA, in the process of normal cell division, it copies the code for the virus. Each daughter cell resulting from this mitotic division carries the virus latent in its own DNA. They now, in their normal life cycle, become factories for the retrovirus, pumping out more and more protein encased genetic sequences. Propagation is very thorough.
A simpler virus might only borrow the mechanisms of the cell to replicate itself. The virus would use DNA polymerases and associated enzymes to copy the genome for the viral offspring and RNA polymerase to transcribe mRNA molecules to translate to proteins for the viral capsid. The baby virii are then assembled (the DNA wrapped in the protective capsid) and they exit the cell. Sometimes this results in the death of the cell, other times it does not. The virus doesn't much care whether the cell survives once it has been copied.
The body, however, doesn't take kindly to its cells being hijacked. It doesn't matter if the viral infection doesn't result in the death of any cells. An infection is inefficient; a virus uses a lot of the cell's energy, energy that could be better spent in normal functions. Here's where the immune system comes in.
How does my immune system protect me from Ebola ?
Proteins are the real workhorses in cellular biology. As far as molecules go they're about as diverse as it gets; almost everything a cell does it does with proteins. A protein is coded for by a gene, a sequence of base pairs in the genome. When we make a protein we tend to make more than one at a time (one type of protein, multiple copies). One or more copies in the set get paired with another protein. This other protein, called MHC, has the sole purpose of escorting its pair to the surface of the cell and holding it there. The surface of the cell has hundreds of proteins of various types sticking out. When a virus instructs a cell to make its proteins the cell follows normal procedure and sends some of them to the surface.
The immune system is incredibly complicated. A subset of it is the T cells, which are themselves divided into two groups, Helper T Cells and Cytotoxic T Cells. Cytotoxic T cells are easier to describe; they're often called assassin cells or natural killer cells. Their purpose is to kill anything foreign that they find in the body. The Helper T Cells each have proteins on their surface (called antibodies) that recognize one target (called an antigen). They wander around, checking out all of the other cells in the body, looking for a match. If a Helper T Cell was looking for EVP-1(Evil Virus Protein 1) it would ignore every cell that didn't display EVP-1 on its surface.
If they find a match they know that the cell is infected with Evil Virus, and they signal for the Cytotoxic cells to come do their job. They also reproduce. So imagine you have a million Helper T Cells with random antibodies on their surface. You're betting on the one cell that is looking for EVP-1 into a cell that happens to be infected with a Ev
On one hand, a victory for the computer means a victory for everything we've been working at for a long time. It means that computers are getting smarter, and smarter, and smarter.
Call me a hypocrite, call me sentimental, but I desperately want Kasparov to win. I want us to still be better than computers at this game. It's highly mathematical, but there's always been a level of flare, panache, and style to the game. Even though 'Knight to King 4' may not sound particularly interesting, it could have been something intrinsically bold and audacious when done by a human player. When the same move is made by a computer it becomes purely calculated.
I want Kasparov to win because I feel like it'd be a blow to the game to let an algorithm (albeit a brilliant one with an unbelievable amount of brute force behind it) beat something feeling.
I loved the first Max Payne. I played it straight through the night I bought it, and still remember the adrenaline rush that it induced. It was dark outside, it was dark in the game, and there was no feeling quite like jumping around a corner and headshotting 3 punks in a fraction of a second.
I just downloa- er, legally obtained- a copy of MP2, and I've started playing through it. Like people have said, it doesn't seem to be anything terribly new. I have, however, noticed a number of improvements in gameplay. My favorite:
When you shoot/dodge and land on the floor you stay lying there until you stop shooting. This has its pros and cons, but I remember being fantastically annoyed at being so vulnerable while Max picked his ass up off the ground.
The graphics are better than in MP, of course, but to my great pleasure the game runs much smoother on my oldish Dell than its predecessor did. I still have a lot of playing left to do, so I'll get back to it. Don't dismiss this game out of hand; it builds on a very strong foundation.
On July 28 a CNN.com Article posed the question, "Should we send a manned mission to Mars?",and gets the answer,
"We can go there after all the things wrong on Earth are fixed," said Betty Collatrella, a retiree from Caldwell, New Jersey. "I'm totally against any of it. It's a total waste of money we need for our kids, for illnesses, could put somebody's kids through college, could cure so many diseases."
And why don't we cure injustice and human suffering first as well? Bleh. We have heard those arguments for decades, but they scare the ever living hell out of me... What's the good of sending kids to college if we stagnate here doing nothing? What good is one more.com founding MBA if the taxes they pay aren't going towards something other than money for more kids to go to college and start more.coms?
Enthusiasm for the program of space exploration was greater among younger adults, those with more education and those with higher incomes. Whites were more likely than blacks and men were more likely than women to think the shuttle should continue to fly.
Let's all just stay home and knit sweaters. Liberal women and their damn social welfare concerns.
More than half, 56 percent, said they believe civilians should be allowed to participate in shuttle missions, while 38 percent said they should not.
This makes no sense to me... Should we send soldiers off into space against their will, or should we ask for volunteers? I think astronauts understand the risks involved pretty well. This article concerns me because the polls show ignorance and lack of ambition. There are also priceless lines like this:
"I think it's all bogus," said Claudette Davidson of Jonesboro, Georgia, who does accounting work for physicians. "I just do not believe they've gone to the moon. I saw Capricorn One," she said, referring to a 1978 movie that featured O.J. Simpson and included a faked trip to Mars. "That did it for me."
My head was about to explode after reading that.
Well, Claudette, do you believe in alien abductions? Maybe the extensive education necessary to perform your job doing 'accounting work for physicians' gives you a unique insight into the veracity of the government's claims regarding the space program. I've got to say, though, that I've seen Catch Me if You Can, and I feel fairly certain that your employer is not only a con artist, but that he is in fact Leonardo DiCaprio.
It's too bad that people like Claudette get to vote.
So the government isn't going to get us to Mars as long as people like Claudette and Betty have any choice in the matter. What we need is a private venture to take us there(see the X Prize) or a good scare provided by the Chinese (see the 100 Day Countdown until China puts a man in space, which may or may not be on hold or on target, I haven't checked) to jumpstart the government program. China is already talking of a moon base. Would that be enough to wake the government up?
Probably not. Claudette wouldn't believe that they had actually gotten there.
After thinking about the ramifications of the numbers, it's amazing that this is the closest recorded near-miss on record. The surface traced by an object 88,000,000 meters from Earth's center is a sphere of volume 2.855x10^18 M^3. The volume of the Earth (given a radius of 6.38x10^6) is 1.089x10^12 M^3. Assuming that the volume of the asteroid is zero (it is in fact approximately 4000 m^3), the chances of it colliding with the Earth are 1 in 250,000 (V_Earth/V_surface). (I don't know how to account for the volume of the asteroid. If it were 4000 asteroids of 1 meter volume you could get a better approximation by multiplying my answer by 4000, but that implies randomly placed, independent objects as opposed to one rock.)
I assume (based on this article) that we've been watching the skies for 100 years, and that this has been the closest pass in that time. That means that any give year we have a 1 in 25,000,000 chance of an impact.
Based on this simple history it's apparent that there have been 2 impacts of similarly sized asteroids in the past 500 years. Either A) my impact probability is off by 5 orders of magnitude or B) this has been a quiet century for near-misses. That kind of statistical variation is unlikely, so what's wrong with my numbers?
Assuming that we've only been able to accurately record near-misses for 20 years drops my probability of impact to 1 in 5 million. Based on that answer there should have been 1/10000th of an impact in the past 500 years. My answer is still off by 4 orders of magnitude. Assuming independent asteroids of 1m volume I go down to 1 order of magnitude error.
I'm going to keep thinking about it, but I have to do a problem set now. I'm interested if anyone sees a flaw in my logic or math, or simply has comments.
Re:nobility of purpose
on
MIT Everyware
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· Score: 1
The anonymous coward post that mentions the red brick school was mine. On a public computer. Sorry.
nobility of purpose
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MIT Everyware
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· Score: 5, Informative
I'm currently paying my $42,000 to be an MIT student. There are people discussing whether OCW will make MIT obsolete, or whether it'll be financial suicide for the school. One person commented that it was erroneous to think of MIT as a for profit organization, which is exactly the point that needed to be made.
The Institute is committed to generating, disseminating, and preserving knowledge, and to working with others to bring this knowledge to bear on the world's great challenges.
It's one thing for a university to say something like that, but what I as a student can contribute to this discussion is the assurance that they're for real. TDespite huge military and government funding there are no secret projects on campus; every research lab is open to every student. Most parts of campus (including the extensive libraries) are even open to the public. Data is posted on the internet as soon as it can be verified... I feel silly listing these individual things MIT does to share information. That's probably because OCW is the single greatest step in that process.
I'm not worried that my degree will be obsolete in 20 years. Other people may have learned the same material organized by the same professors, but the real value of MIT is the interaction with the teachers and the students. It comes with a hefty price tag, of course. Disclaimer: MIT isn't perfect. Every time I've mentioned the school before I've gotten flamed. Flame away. The school isn't perfect, but it does have a particular nobility of purpose.
So what kind of regulations would be in effect in this market? If you were a US soldier being sent on a top secret mission to depose a leader would you be guilty of insider trading if you bet on the leader's overthrow? What about CIA operatives? Wouldn't their up to date, classified knowledge give them in unfair advantage in the market? I see a few smart government employees making a lot of money in schemes like this. Can I place a bet on that?
These are the same researchers that made/. last week for their article on the audiopad. (The link's a mirror, since the site is down.) They must feel pretty good about themselves right now...
I agree completely with the people who are saying that there is a thriving ecosystem around the lab. I'm looking out my window right now, and I see geese, swans, ducks, a groundhog, wild turkeys, and a bunch of starlings. There are deer corpses along Bethel Valley Road (a 10 mile or so stretch from downtown Oak Ridge, if it can be described as such, through the lab campus) nearly every morning, a tribute to the growth potential of a population shielded by armed guards from predators and rednecks with rifles.
What those who speak in praise of the city haven't mentioned is that the swan pond that I'm looking at is surrounded by a fence, that you can't fish anywhere downstream of the labs for miles and miles, and that there are still barrels of STUFF that we don't even know exist buried around the countryside. Sure, on the surface things are fine, but that's because the heavy metals have long since sunken into the earth.
It's not like the situation hasn't gotten infinitely better since the initial mismanagement of the lab (alluded to by a previous poster and by Richard Feynmann's 'The Pleasure of Finding Things Out'). We built an onsite waste management facility, as part of the cleanup led by Bechtel Jacobs. It was a step in the right direction for the lab, as it allows us not only to repair damage already done, but to prevent causing further harm to the environment as research on radioactive materials continues. (side note: we prefer the term 'rare isotope'... It doesn't scare the populace). The cleanup process was not painless, as this proposal by Bechtel Jacobs (the company leading the multi-billion dollar effort) and article from the Knoxville News-Sentinel indicate. We're nearly done, though. Occasionally something surprises us, but the situation's better than it was.
So, on to the article at last... These microbes don't have a huge utility value here, but they have great potential. Chernobyl, anyone? If there's another uncontained meltdown, these little buggers can be deployed almost immediately (via aerosol spray delivered in an overfly by crop dusters) to begin to counteract the fatal seep of irradiated cadmium and contaminated nickel. It's not of use now, but it's a valuable tool to have in our box.
If everyone's DNA was on file it would be hell on crime. The technology is coming where they just run a vacuum all around a crime scene and the computer will match up everyone who shed a skin flake there.
I think that's exactly what the privacy people are concerned about. It's also not a flawless system. Ever seen Gattacca? The main character (played by Ethan Hawke) is one of the few people born to his world who wasn't genetically screened, and so is genetically inferior to almost everyone else. He hires Jude Law, a now crippled, genetically screened Olympian, to provide DNA and fluid samples (everything from skin flakes to hair to blood to urine) to use to fool the daily screening the people go through. He has fake fingerprints attached to his finger tips with adhesive, encapsulating a resevoir of Jude Law's blood, which stand up to fingerprint scans and pinprick instant DNA tests. Ethan Hawke kept his hair shaved extremely short, removed dead skin and body hair with intense scrubbing, and managed to avoid leaving samples everywhere he went.
What if the cops vacuumed up a murder scene, say the trunk of your car, and only found your DNA and the DNA of the victim there? What if the murderer (not you, just some guy who dumped a corpse in your car) followed a procedure similar to Ethan Hawke's, or vacuumed up his own DNA, or clothed himself in a neoprene suit? What defense could you possibly have against a prosecuting lawyer in this situation?
While this scenario is unlikely, I only use it to illustrate for the people who see DNA databases as a panacea for crime that their system if not flawless.
Other arguments (which have been made a million times but deserve to be made ahead) include the possibility of exclusion from insurance policies based on predispositions found for Alzheimer's, alcoholism, Huntington's, etc. in your archived DNA, true 'identity theft' involving the use of your genetic code for arbitrary illicit purposes, 'borrowing' of the DNA of models, scientists, politicians, etc. for the use of artificial insemination by anyone who can afford the appropriate bribes or hacker.
The world becomes a lot smaller with a DNA database. The more we rely on DNA checking in our day to day life (for example in place of a pin code for the use of a check card), the more often your exact location can be logged and tracked. I'm not extremely concerned about privacy (I have nothing to hide), but I don't much care for the idea of the government or corporations knowing where I am every time I make a purchase, open the door to my office, vote, whatever. While it's creepy that they have up to the minute updates on where you are, perhaps it's creepier that they could have an archive of everywhere you'd been for the past 10 years. Cookies in internet browsers pale in comparison to the tailor-made advertisements that could be created with such information.
in Tennessee, meanwhile, a team of researchers has been working for 18 months on an underlying network architecture for a national sensor network.
I work at the Labs, right down the hall from these guys. I play soccer with a man named Panos Datskos. He recently finished building a cantilever based electronic nose that has the potential to detect a single molecule. Datskos is working on a "universal" sensor that shares many of the same processes of a gas chromatograph to identify any substance. As described in the article, it uses very basic technology (a CD laser). It's also very compact, the size and shape of a discman. The coolest thing about the technology is that it functions in the ambient environment. It does not, like most laboratory equipment, require a vacuum, extreme temperatures, or special shock absorbance to reduce vibration. This is the kind of device that they'll be deploying to airports, I believe.
(This is a bit rambling, but please read before you mod off-topic)
Wouldn't it make sense to spin off a portion of the FAA and make it (just an example) the Federal Space Administration?
I think that this is a great idea, but good luck getting anyone to fund it. What, exactly, would this agency do right now? We have no shuttle flights (nor do we have any planned for the near future), Mars continues to be a pipe dream, and the ISS is serviced by Russian craft. There's not much to regulate right now. I agree that we'll need one in the future, it's just that the future seems an awfully long way away right now.
I think that the only real chance we have for space exploration, at least until China starts kicking our asses in the race to Mars, is commercial. How about a lottery where a couple of people get a ticket to Mars? Zubrin proposes a $30 billion long term Mars program. At $1000 a ticket, that means we have to sell 30 million tickets (assuming absolutely 0 investment, 0 government aid, and 0 commercial sponsorship (The Pepsi Landing Module, anyone?)). I'm just a poor college student, but you can be damn sure I'd scrape up the cash. Many of the rich and famous would by several tickets, I'd bet. Maybe we couldn't sell 30 million tickets here. Our population is about 280 million, so that's about one person in 9 buying tickets. Pretty unlikely. Our chances get better, however, when we open the lottery up world-wide.
So, before I get modded off-topic, I guess what I'm trying to say is that the space exploration of the future needs to be a cooperative effort.
The government needs to deregulate. Anyone who tries to make space something other than the Wild West is a bit delusional. By stepping back and letting explorers take over their doing nothing that we didn't already do in Tennessee, or Montana, or California.
Commercial ventures need to come up with the money. With all of the MBAs pouring out of Harvard alone you figure that someone could come up with a viable business model. Keep the lottery idea in mind, it's a quick way to make the cash roll in.
Citizens need, at the very least, to vote for Pro-Space Exploration congressmen. How are you going to get Joe Sixpack to vote at all, let alone for such a seemingly trivial issue? Make it exciting again. We need imminent, impressive goals. Mars doesn't count. Even now a landing is 15 years away.
What can we do to: A) Help the plight of commercial space programs bogged down in bureaucracy?
B) Increase funding to government space programs?
C) Let congress know that there are people interested in space exploration?
Why, I'm glad you asked. Write your congressman. The Mars Society has a well developed lobbying system, including mailing lists and meeting reports. Don't know whether your congressman stands on this issue? Get their report card.
and I have to say that it is unbelievably hard to write algorithms that take an image and break it down into relevant data. What isn't even work for us (looking at an image and determining the license plate number of a car) becomes a huge strain on a computer processor, assuming that code can be written that performs the job reliably. The lower the image resolution is, the harder it becomes to glean anything from the picture. What is this 8 kilobits a second joke? Even if they can compress the video to that extent, I doubt any usable information would be retained. But, since I know that you can compress it that much, how do they plan on getting the data back to their central processing station? The infrastructure isn't there. Are they going to be running cable lines? Installing dial-up modems?
Even if they get the infrastructure set up, how do they implement this in our legal system? I figure that the images they have will be grainy, black and white, and of blurry, moving cars at night. I don't see how you can hand that to a jury and say, "Well, even though you can't see anything here, our program is nearly 87% certain that this car is in fact the car of the defendant." Is 13% reasonable doubt? Is 12%? We know that.5% isn't, or cases involving DNA evidence would be thrown out. At what point does jury duty become the analysis of quantatative figures as opposed to qualitative arguments?
To some extent I feel like a logical justice system is a step forward for society. At the same time, I'd prefer a trial by my peers, were I ever faced with the choice. Some day a jury deliberation may be number crunching:
"Well, the computer on 4th and Broad Street has determined with 75 percent probability that the defendant was moving towards the scene of the crime, and the computer on 5th and Broad Street gives us a 80 percent probability that he stopped at the scene. That gives us a 95% degree of probability that he was at the scene at the time of the murder. According to the Numerical Methods Act of 2015, we have to convict him."
Speaking as one of the 'kids' of today...
on
The Big Kerplop
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I don't think we're any 'fatter' or 'more hogtied' than you geezers were. We don't play with breadboards because electronics have long since passed the point where anything sophisticated can be achieved with a soldering iron. Instead I learned C++, HTML, and some PERL. I'm as technically adept as you were at my age; all that's happened is a spectrum shift from hardware to software.
I haven't read these books, but I've done my fair share of back yard demolitions. I think that anything that encourages children to do the same (responsibly and from the standpoint of intellectual curiosity) is admirable. Sure you have to show some common sense around dangerous substances, but you're not going to learn any if you're sheltered by adults your whole life.
I think that if kids today are any less adventurous than the kids of the fifties it's because their parents encourage them to be. Of course no father wants his son to be in any danger. My father's solution was to buy me a pair of safety goggles, some work gloves, and sit down with me to demonstrate the correct, safe, responsible way to light a bonfire with a zipline, 10 gallons of gasoline, and a model rocket.
Sure, not every parent will go to that extreme, but how about a middle ground? Start with safety tips and responsibility discussions while playing with sparklers and firecrackers on the 4th of July. Quality time with the kids plus valuable lessons that they can see demonstrated by an authority figure.
You're right, of course. But I have faith that some day a new browser will come along that blows IE completely out of the water in looks, efficiency, features, etc. I don't think that it'll have a commercial potential any greater than the life expectancy of an icicle in hell, but it'll force IE to remodel in order to maintain its vice-like grip on the browser market. Microsoft will undoubtably crush the upstart into the dust, but not before some changes have been made. (Again, MS's triumph is probably unjustified. Don't flame me.)
Slashdot Mirror
So this is only marginally on topic, but the story reminded me of a video I saw when I was a kid, I think featuring the Kraffts, that talked about a sulfuric lake caused by volcanic activity. I seem to recall the hosts of the video talking about someone's skin being eaten away by the acid in the lake, but I can't find anything on it in a quick google search. Has anyone else heard about this lake or this gruesome skin story? Now I've got the image in my head and I want to read more about it. I'm drawn to it like a train wreck. Well, a train carrying vats of sulfuric acid, at least.
Well, we have 1000s of the smartest foreign nationals in the world at MIT and Harvard. I think that's probably a big part of it.
$60 for 3 hours comes from playing those same 3 hours night after night. It's not a single night's winnings.
3 notes: 1. $20 is a 2 bots at a single table, 2-3 tables running number. 2. It's also a peak hours number. I don't leave the account open 24/7, in part because real humans don't play all day long every day. I haven't run during other hours in a long time, but when I did I was making 50-75% what I make from 12AM-3AM. 3. The hotmail account is 4 years old and inactive. Maybe I don't want email from people on /. (and bots on /.) going to mit.edu and my relatively new and clean gmail account.
So the $20 an hour number would not be accurate for a single bot and it would certainly not hold over 24 hours. It comes from a $60 profit in 3 hours using multiple instances of the program. I'm sorry if my evil genius came off as absurd.
Cheers to the skeptics.
Some of my buddies at MIT and I have been operating a program like this for over a year now. We wrote the control algorithms ourselves based on our preferred play styles and fit them into a screen scanning program. The program is no better than any of us, but it has the advantage of being cold and methodical. We included code for an emergency stop so that if something went wrong we wouldn't lose all of our money, though it hasn't been an issue after the initial testing phase. I'm still uncomfortable about using the program for higher stakes games, but on a 50 cent/1 dollar Hold 'Em table at peak hours (discovered through trial and error) the program consistently makes about $20 an hour.
I'm not quite sure the black box was needed. Wouldn't the coroner's report make it evident that the guy was going way faster than the speed limit? That already proves he lied under questioning. The fact that he didn't hit the brakes should have been demonstrated by the lack of skid marks at the accident, right? So what did this box do that old fashioned detective work couldn't?
I agree that when he was sent into space he was basically a fighter jock, and had nothing to do with the scientific planning that went on. However, he did stay involved in space exploration even after he stopped flying, and I think that he's picked up a thing or two since then. His advocacy has been important to NASA, and he is probably the most recognized public figure to stand up for them.
This guy seems to be closest to the target, I think. The reason ants don't fry is that the majority of the microwaves 'miss' them. The ant is smaller than the microwave wavelength (which varies between 10^-1 and 10^-4 meters), and so can miss the crests, so to speak, and avoid frying.
I think it fried all of the bills in the same spot because all of the bills had similar orientation and position, and Jackson's eye was right over a spot of peak intensity. Microwaves don't cook evenly; that's all he's demonstrated.
Most people don't give a sports match their full attention. They might raptly watch the replays, they might focus more the game when it gets tense, but most people are hanging out with their friends at the same time, or eating, or switching between ESPN and CBS.
The way that televised sports cope with the monotony of the wait for action is with commentary. They'll step out of the game to give stats, a retired professional will give his take on the rookie at bat or the down just completed. Most people don't want to watch players set up their bases, but they also don't much care to watch the football players line up time and time again. Most soccer fans don't pay nearly as much attention when the ball is in midfield as they do when the players are poised for a shot on goal.
Conclusion 1: Game spectating needs to be something you can do in a group before it will catch on.
Conclusion 2: There needs to be a mechanism to give commentary and instant replays to the viewers.
Conclusion 3: Game spectating has to be flexible. It has to be something that you can give part of your divided attention to, not the sole activity of a few hours on a Sunday afternoon.
What is a Virus? How does it work?
A virus is a protein sheath (called a capsid) covering genetic information. The protein sheath varies in size and shape, the most famous being the T4 Bacteriophage (picture on the bar on the left). Simply put, the genetic information can be in the form of RNA or DNA. The virus latches onto a host cell and injects its genetic material through the plasma membrane.
Viruses all have different strategies at this point, depending on their structure and target cells.
The most insidious, the retroviruses (of HIV fame), incorporate their genome into the host cell's. When the host cell copies its own DNA, in the process of normal cell division, it copies the code for the virus. Each daughter cell resulting from this mitotic division carries the virus latent in its own DNA. They now, in their normal life cycle, become factories for the retrovirus, pumping out more and more protein encased genetic sequences. Propagation is very thorough.
A simpler virus might only borrow the mechanisms of the cell to replicate itself. The virus would use DNA polymerases and associated enzymes to copy the genome for the viral offspring and RNA polymerase to transcribe mRNA molecules to translate to proteins for the viral capsid. The baby virii are then assembled (the DNA wrapped in the protective capsid) and they exit the cell. Sometimes this results in the death of the cell, other times it does not. The virus doesn't much care whether the cell survives once it has been copied.
The body, however, doesn't take kindly to its cells being hijacked. It doesn't matter if the viral infection doesn't result in the death of any cells. An infection is inefficient; a virus uses a lot of the cell's energy, energy that could be better spent in normal functions. Here's where the immune system comes in.
How does my immune system protect me from Ebola ?
Proteins are the real workhorses in cellular biology. As far as molecules go they're about as diverse as it gets; almost everything a cell does it does with proteins. A protein is coded for by a gene, a sequence of base pairs in the genome. When we make a protein we tend to make more than one at a time (one type of protein, multiple copies). One or more copies in the set get paired with another protein. This other protein, called MHC, has the sole purpose of escorting its pair to the surface of the cell and holding it there. The surface of the cell has hundreds of proteins of various types sticking out. When a virus instructs a cell to make its proteins the cell follows normal procedure and sends some of them to the surface.
The immune system is incredibly complicated. A subset of it is the T cells, which are themselves divided into two groups, Helper T Cells and Cytotoxic T Cells. Cytotoxic T cells are easier to describe; they're often called assassin cells or natural killer cells. Their purpose is to kill anything foreign that they find in the body. The Helper T Cells each have proteins on their surface (called antibodies) that recognize one target (called an antigen). They wander around, checking out all of the other cells in the body, looking for a match. If a Helper T Cell was looking for EVP-1(Evil Virus Protein 1) it would ignore every cell that didn't display EVP-1 on its surface.
If they find a match they know that the cell is infected with Evil Virus, and they signal for the Cytotoxic cells to come do their job. They also reproduce. So imagine you have a million Helper T Cells with random antibodies on their surface. You're betting on the one cell that is looking for EVP-1 into a cell that happens to be infected with a Ev
On one hand, a victory for the computer means a victory for everything we've been working at for a long time. It means that computers are getting smarter, and smarter, and smarter.
Call me a hypocrite, call me sentimental, but I desperately want Kasparov to win. I want us to still be better than computers at this game. It's highly mathematical, but there's always been a level of flare, panache, and style to the game. Even though 'Knight to King 4' may not sound particularly interesting, it could have been something intrinsically bold and audacious when done by a human player. When the same move is made by a computer it becomes purely calculated.
I want Kasparov to win because I feel like it'd be a blow to the game to let an algorithm (albeit a brilliant one with an unbelievable amount of brute force behind it) beat something feeling.
I just downloa- er, legally obtained- a copy of MP2, and I've started playing through it. Like people have said, it doesn't seem to be anything terribly new. I have, however, noticed a number of improvements in gameplay. My favorite: When you shoot/dodge and land on the floor you stay lying there until you stop shooting. This has its pros and cons, but I remember being fantastically annoyed at being so vulnerable while Max picked his ass up off the ground.
The graphics are better than in MP, of course, but to my great pleasure the game runs much smoother on my oldish Dell than its predecessor did. I still have a lot of playing left to do, so I'll get back to it. Don't dismiss this game out of hand; it builds on a very strong foundation.
"We can go there after all the things wrong on Earth are fixed," said Betty Collatrella, a retiree from Caldwell, New Jersey. "I'm totally against any of it. It's a total waste of money we need for our kids, for illnesses, could put somebody's kids through college, could cure so many diseases."
And why don't we cure injustice and human suffering first as well? Bleh. We have heard those arguments for decades, but they scare the ever living hell out of me... What's the good of sending kids to college if we stagnate here doing nothing? What good is one more .com founding MBA if the taxes they pay aren't going towards something other than money for more kids to go to college and start more .coms?
Enthusiasm for the program of space exploration was greater among younger adults, those with more education and those with higher incomes. Whites were more likely than blacks and men were more likely than women to think the shuttle should continue to fly.
Let's all just stay home and knit sweaters. Liberal women and their damn social welfare concerns.
More than half, 56 percent, said they believe civilians should be allowed to participate in shuttle missions, while 38 percent said they should not.
This makes no sense to me... Should we send soldiers off into space against their will, or should we ask for volunteers? I think astronauts understand the risks involved pretty well. This article concerns me because the polls show ignorance and lack of ambition. There are also priceless lines like this:
"I think it's all bogus," said Claudette Davidson of Jonesboro, Georgia, who does accounting work for physicians. "I just do not believe they've gone to the moon. I saw Capricorn One," she said, referring to a 1978 movie that featured O.J. Simpson and included a faked trip to Mars. "That did it for me."
My head was about to explode after reading that.
Well, Claudette, do you believe in alien abductions? Maybe the extensive education necessary to perform your job doing 'accounting work for physicians' gives you a unique insight into the veracity of the government's claims regarding the space program. I've got to say, though, that I've seen Catch Me if You Can, and I feel fairly certain that your employer is not only a con artist, but that he is in fact Leonardo DiCaprio.
It's too bad that people like Claudette get to vote.
So the government isn't going to get us to Mars as long as people like Claudette and Betty have any choice in the matter. What we need is a private venture to take us there(see the X Prize) or a good scare provided by the Chinese (see the 100 Day Countdown until China puts a man in space, which may or may not be on hold or on target, I haven't checked) to jumpstart the government program. China is already talking of a moon base. Would that be enough to wake the government up?
Probably not. Claudette wouldn't believe that they had actually gotten there.
I assume (based on this article) that we've been watching the skies for 100 years, and that this has been the closest pass in that time. That means that any give year we have a 1 in 25,000,000 chance of an impact.
Based on this simple history it's apparent that there have been 2 impacts of similarly sized asteroids in the past 500 years. Either A) my impact probability is off by 5 orders of magnitude or B) this has been a quiet century for near-misses. That kind of statistical variation is unlikely, so what's wrong with my numbers?
Assuming that we've only been able to accurately record near-misses for 20 years drops my probability of impact to 1 in 5 million. Based on that answer there should have been 1/10000th of an impact in the past 500 years. My answer is still off by 4 orders of magnitude. Assuming independent asteroids of 1m volume I go down to 1 order of magnitude error.
I'm going to keep thinking about it, but I have to do a problem set now. I'm interested if anyone sees a flaw in my logic or math, or simply has comments.
The anonymous coward post that mentions the red brick school was mine. On a public computer. Sorry.
From the MIT mission statement:
The Institute is committed to generating, disseminating, and preserving knowledge, and to working with others to bring this knowledge to bear on the world's great challenges.
It's one thing for a university to say something like that, but what I as a student can contribute to this discussion is the assurance that they're for real. TDespite huge military and government funding there are no secret projects on campus; every research lab is open to every student. Most parts of campus (including the extensive libraries) are even open to the public. Data is posted on the internet as soon as it can be verified... I feel silly listing these individual things MIT does to share information. That's probably because OCW is the single greatest step in that process.
I'm not worried that my degree will be obsolete in 20 years. Other people may have learned the same material organized by the same professors, but the real value of MIT is the interaction with the teachers and the students. It comes with a hefty price tag, of course. Disclaimer: MIT isn't perfect. Every time I've mentioned the school before I've gotten flamed. Flame away. The school isn't perfect, but it does have a particular nobility of purpose.
So what kind of regulations would be in effect in this market? If you were a US soldier being sent on a top secret mission to depose a leader would you be guilty of insider trading if you bet on the leader's overthrow? What about CIA operatives? Wouldn't their up to date, classified knowledge give them in unfair advantage in the market? I see a few smart government employees making a lot of money in schemes like this. Can I place a bet on that?
These are the same researchers that made /. last week for their article on the audiopad. (The link's a mirror, since the site is down.) They must feel pretty good about themselves right now...
What those who speak in praise of the city haven't mentioned is that the swan pond that I'm looking at is surrounded by a fence, that you can't fish anywhere downstream of the labs for miles and miles, and that there are still barrels of STUFF that we don't even know exist buried around the countryside. Sure, on the surface things are fine, but that's because the heavy metals have long since sunken into the earth.
It's not like the situation hasn't gotten infinitely better since the initial mismanagement of the lab (alluded to by a previous poster and by Richard Feynmann's 'The Pleasure of Finding Things Out'). We built an onsite waste management facility, as part of the cleanup led by Bechtel Jacobs. It was a step in the right direction for the lab, as it allows us not only to repair damage already done, but to prevent causing further harm to the environment as research on radioactive materials continues. (side note: we prefer the term 'rare isotope'... It doesn't scare the populace). The cleanup process was not painless, as this proposal by Bechtel Jacobs (the company leading the multi-billion dollar effort) and article from the Knoxville News-Sentinel indicate. We're nearly done, though. Occasionally something surprises us, but the situation's better than it was.
So, on to the article at last... These microbes don't have a huge utility value here, but they have great potential. Chernobyl, anyone? If there's another uncontained meltdown, these little buggers can be deployed almost immediately (via aerosol spray delivered in an overfly by crop dusters) to begin to counteract the fatal seep of irradiated cadmium and contaminated nickel. It's not of use now, but it's a valuable tool to have in our box.
I think that's exactly what the privacy people are concerned about. It's also not a flawless system. Ever seen Gattacca? The main character (played by Ethan Hawke) is one of the few people born to his world who wasn't genetically screened, and so is genetically inferior to almost everyone else. He hires Jude Law, a now crippled, genetically screened Olympian, to provide DNA and fluid samples (everything from skin flakes to hair to blood to urine) to use to fool the daily screening the people go through. He has fake fingerprints attached to his finger tips with adhesive, encapsulating a resevoir of Jude Law's blood, which stand up to fingerprint scans and pinprick instant DNA tests. Ethan Hawke kept his hair shaved extremely short, removed dead skin and body hair with intense scrubbing, and managed to avoid leaving samples everywhere he went.
What if the cops vacuumed up a murder scene, say the trunk of your car, and only found your DNA and the DNA of the victim there? What if the murderer (not you, just some guy who dumped a corpse in your car) followed a procedure similar to Ethan Hawke's, or vacuumed up his own DNA, or clothed himself in a neoprene suit? What defense could you possibly have against a prosecuting lawyer in this situation?
While this scenario is unlikely, I only use it to illustrate for the people who see DNA databases as a panacea for crime that their system if not flawless.
Other arguments (which have been made a million times but deserve to be made ahead) include the possibility of exclusion from insurance policies based on predispositions found for Alzheimer's, alcoholism, Huntington's, etc. in your archived DNA, true 'identity theft' involving the use of your genetic code for arbitrary illicit purposes, 'borrowing' of the DNA of models, scientists, politicians, etc. for the use of artificial insemination by anyone who can afford the appropriate bribes or hacker.
The world becomes a lot smaller with a DNA database. The more we rely on DNA checking in our day to day life (for example in place of a pin code for the use of a check card), the more often your exact location can be logged and tracked. I'm not extremely concerned about privacy (I have nothing to hide), but I don't much care for the idea of the government or corporations knowing where I am every time I make a purchase, open the door to my office, vote, whatever. While it's creepy that they have up to the minute updates on where you are, perhaps it's creepier that they could have an archive of everywhere you'd been for the past 10 years. Cookies in internet browsers pale in comparison to the tailor-made advertisements that could be created with such information.
I work at the Labs, right down the hall from these guys. I play soccer with a man named Panos Datskos. He recently finished building a cantilever based electronic nose that has the potential to detect a single molecule. Datskos is working on a "universal" sensor that shares many of the same processes of a gas chromatograph to identify any substance. As described in the article, it uses very basic technology (a CD laser). It's also very compact, the size and shape of a discman. The coolest thing about the technology is that it functions in the ambient environment. It does not, like most laboratory equipment, require a vacuum, extreme temperatures, or special shock absorbance to reduce vibration. This is the kind of device that they'll be deploying to airports, I believe.
Wouldn't it make sense to spin off a portion of the FAA and make it (just an example) the Federal Space Administration?
I think that this is a great idea, but good luck getting anyone to fund it. What, exactly, would this agency do right now? We have no shuttle flights (nor do we have any planned for the near future), Mars continues to be a pipe dream, and the ISS is serviced by Russian craft. There's not much to regulate right now. I agree that we'll need one in the future, it's just that the future seems an awfully long way away right now.
I think that the only real chance we have for space exploration, at least until China starts kicking our asses in the race to Mars, is commercial. How about a lottery where a couple of people get a ticket to Mars? Zubrin proposes a $30 billion long term Mars program. At $1000 a ticket, that means we have to sell 30 million tickets (assuming absolutely 0 investment, 0 government aid, and 0 commercial sponsorship (The Pepsi Landing Module, anyone?)). I'm just a poor college student, but you can be damn sure I'd scrape up the cash. Many of the rich and famous would by several tickets, I'd bet. Maybe we couldn't sell 30 million tickets here. Our population is about 280 million, so that's about one person in 9 buying tickets. Pretty unlikely. Our chances get better, however, when we open the lottery up world-wide.
So, before I get modded off-topic, I guess what I'm trying to say is that the space exploration of the future needs to be a cooperative effort.
The government needs to deregulate. Anyone who tries to make space something other than the Wild West is a bit delusional. By stepping back and letting explorers take over their doing nothing that we didn't already do in Tennessee, or Montana, or California.
Commercial ventures need to come up with the money. With all of the MBAs pouring out of Harvard alone you figure that someone could come up with a viable business model. Keep the lottery idea in mind, it's a quick way to make the cash roll in.
Citizens need, at the very least, to vote for Pro-Space Exploration congressmen. How are you going to get Joe Sixpack to vote at all, let alone for such a seemingly trivial issue? Make it exciting again. We need imminent, impressive goals. Mars doesn't count. Even now a landing is 15 years away.
What can we do to:
A) Help the plight of commercial space programs bogged down in bureaucracy?
B) Increase funding to government space programs?
C) Let congress know that there are people interested in space exploration?
Why, I'm glad you asked. Write your congressman. The Mars Society has a well developed lobbying system, including mailing lists and meeting reports. Don't know whether your congressman stands on this issue? Get their report card.
Even if they get the infrastructure set up, how do they implement this in our legal system? I figure that the images they have will be grainy, black and white, and of blurry, moving cars at night. I don't see how you can hand that to a jury and say, "Well, even though you can't see anything here, our program is nearly 87% certain that this car is in fact the car of the defendant." Is 13% reasonable doubt? Is 12%? We know that .5% isn't, or cases involving DNA evidence would be thrown out. At what point does jury duty become the analysis of quantatative figures as opposed to qualitative arguments?
To some extent I feel like a logical justice system is a step forward for society. At the same time, I'd prefer a trial by my peers, were I ever faced with the choice. Some day a jury deliberation may be number crunching:
"Well, the computer on 4th and Broad Street has determined with 75 percent probability that the defendant was moving towards the scene of the crime, and the computer on 5th and Broad Street gives us a 80 percent probability that he stopped at the scene. That gives us a 95% degree of probability that he was at the scene at the time of the murder. According to the Numerical Methods Act of 2015, we have to convict him."
I haven't read these books, but I've done my fair share of back yard demolitions. I think that anything that encourages children to do the same (responsibly and from the standpoint of intellectual curiosity) is admirable. Sure you have to show some common sense around dangerous substances, but you're not going to learn any if you're sheltered by adults your whole life.
I think that if kids today are any less adventurous than the kids of the fifties it's because their parents encourage them to be. Of course no father wants his son to be in any danger. My father's solution was to buy me a pair of safety goggles, some work gloves, and sit down with me to demonstrate the correct, safe, responsible way to light a bonfire with a zipline, 10 gallons of gasoline, and a model rocket.
Sure, not every parent will go to that extreme, but how about a middle ground? Start with safety tips and responsibility discussions while playing with sparklers and firecrackers on the 4th of July. Quality time with the kids plus valuable lessons that they can see demonstrated by an authority figure.
You're right, of course. But I have faith that some day a new browser will come along that blows IE completely out of the water in looks, efficiency, features, etc. I don't think that it'll have a commercial potential any greater than the life expectancy of an icicle in hell, but it'll force IE to remodel in order to maintain its vice-like grip on the browser market. Microsoft will undoubtably crush the upstart into the dust, but not before some changes have been made. (Again, MS's triumph is probably unjustified. Don't flame me.)