There's not necessarily any magic here. DNA is damaged and repaired continuously as a normal part of the activity of your cells. Like most of the processes that occur at a cellular level, DNA repair is mediated by enzymes, which are proteins. There are proteins that are fixing damage to your DNA right now.
Yeah, I think the best solution is to compress the proposed password using a large (compression) dictionary, and require the compressed password to be above a certain number of bits in length.
I assume that's what current password strength checkers do. Does anyone on slashdot know?
Yeah, I was wondering about the characters on the cover, behind the CJKV.
I was familiar with the first three, the kanji used to represent China (the character for middle), Japan (the character for the sun) and Korea (the character for... Korea), but I didn't realize the last one was the character for Vietnam. It normally means to wake or cause. FWIW, the old name for Vietnam in Japanese seems to be "etsunan", which I guess is pretty close phonetically.
I think the one great programmer he's talking about is Guy L Steele. (That was supposed to be obvious, though, right?) If your definition of "great programmer" doesn't describe Guy L Steele, maybe it isn't a good definition;-)
If you'd read much of what Paul Graham has written, or much of the literature on Lisp, or even functional languages in general, you'd know that no-one is advocating using Lisp all the time. One of the almost-magical things about Lisp is how easy it is to make domain specific languages that truly are suited to the task at hand.
You are certainly correct that a great programmer uses the right tool for the job. This includes knowing when the right tool for the job doesn't exist yet, and judging the costs and benefits of writing a tool perfectly suited to the task at hand.
One of the key pieces in video compression is detecting motion vectors automatically from video. Once you have motion vectors, there are algorithms to turn sequences of motion vectors into 3D models. I've seen video with an automatically generated wireframe on it before, but I couldn't find the link.
Small, 3D screens that don't require the use of glasses are already commercially available. I saw ads for 3D screen cellphones all the time on Japanese TV and on the train. I thought it was interesting, but not worth buying a new phone.
Just click on the "change" button after the summary and the comment subjects display correctly. Whatever the problem is with the cached story pages, comments.pl is fine.
There is no objective meaning to life. Any meaning that you might try to assign to life is ultimately arbitrary. There is no objective measure by which the "goodness" or "badness" of one's actions might be determined. (Neither "success" nor "failure" are meaningful, either.)
You might be able to justify (for instance) Humanism to yourself, but once you start to believe that the values of Humanists are somehow objectively true, or that they give your life purpose, you've begun to delude yourself.
The word cannibal is derived from the name of a cannibalistic tribe that Columbus recorded. The word has broadened from its original meaning of (a specific tribe of) humans who eat humans to include animals that eat their own kind.
You've tried to create your own scientific definition of an ill-defined word that dates from the 15th century. Unless you justify your definition in some way, this is just a tautology.
Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.
And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.
For the sake of numeracy, I thought I should point out that the fibonacci sequence is the sum of an increasing exponential function and a decreasing exponential function. Its asymptotic behaviour is the same as an exponential function.
The absolute value of the a1b1^x term is always less than 1/2 for positive x, so the a0b0^x term (which is an exponential function) has an error of less than.5 when approximating the xth term of the fibonacci sequence.
I think Microsoft is being kinda generous by offering to pay for a huge chunk of it.
I think the city of Redmond is being kinda generous by not raising Microsoft's taxes in order to pay for the entire cost of the bridge necessitated by Microsoft.
The most important feature for those devices is a barcode scanner. Barcode scanning is the only way to enter data from labels that is cheap, reliable and fast enough to be practical.
The second most important consideration is ergonomic. Workers will be holding and operating the devices constantly, so they're usually built with handles.
Without either feature, a touchscreen netbook would be worthless in a warehouse.
But as I'm sure there's someone who actually lives in japan around on the forums, please post back and tell us what the real story is... I only talk to people online.
Ok.
But they don't use it either. Here's the facts: The phone market for Japan is the tightest in the world. Frankly, the phones sold there are generations ahead of what's sold elsewhere in the world. These phones do video teleconferencing, can be used to do wireless credit card transactions, digital TV, some of them can be used as train/bus passes, and even interface with vending machines (just point and click, and viola).
Most phones have a video call option, but I've never used it, nor do I know anyone that uses it. Digital TV (called 1seg) is popular now, and it might be a feature that effects purchasing decisions. Pasmo/Suica (digital train pass cards) are already widely used, so there's not a real need to add the feature to a phone. Vending machines are everywhere, but the kind you're talking about must be pretty rare.
So, yes, Digital TV is an important feature, but that hardly equates to the iPhone having a poor feature set. You'd be hard pressed to find any phones that truly outshine the iPhone here.
The "iphone" frankly has a poor feature set, and oh yes -- it is not a flip phone. The japanese love their flip phones from everything I've read.
Rather than characterizing the Japanese as flip-phone lovers, you should realize that fads are very important to them. The iPod is (was?) popular and trendy, and so is the iPhone. People will just buy whatever everyone else is talking about, until their friends start talking about the next big thing.
So no, Japan doesn't hate the iphone, there is no conspiracy, Apple is simply behind the times in that country. But hey, if it makes you feel any better -- I doubt Comcast is making any inroads there either.;)
To provide a counterpoint, I've had 7 French coworkers, and two Spanish coworkers. Of those, two of the French and one of the Spaniards were let go because the had absolutely no technical understanding (and were untrainable). The rest only know a single programming language and even then misuse even the most common idioms.
Of course there are many talented European programmers. Just be aware that Sturgeon's Law applies here, too.
Wow, thank you for finding that. I'm amazed. I concede the point entirely.
What is your interpretation of the "intent to deprive" clause? The section on evidence doesn't seem to list any evidence of intent to deprive that would apply to duplicating music. If there is no intent to deprive, unauthorized control over property is not theft under the Indiana definition. However, I'm sure the application of the code is much more complicated in real life.
From your description of the business model, it seems like the sales of previously released games are used to commission the production of the next game. In a hypothetical future world populated only by pirates, there are no sales dollars, and so no new games get made.
Couldn't the business model be changed slightly so that the game is released after players contribute enough to pay off its development? (It's been called a ransom.) Even today gamers have to pay for games they haven't played yet when they purchase from retail stores. I don't know if such a change is practical, but if the situation is as bleak as you describe, hopefully something will change.
The Prohibition was unenforcable. To use your distasteful example, if the majority of Americans enjoyed raping others on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, it would be impossible to arrest and try all of them, as well. Consider a rape trial where it's likely that the judge or the prosecutor and most of the jury are open and unapologetic rapists.
Maybe more importantly, the Prohibition actually led to increased drinking:
When Prohibition was introduced, I hoped that it would be widely supported by public opinion and the day would soon come when the evil effects of alcohol would be recognized. I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe that this has not been the result. Instead, drinking has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have openly ignored Prohibition; respect for the law has been greatly lessened; and crime has increased to a level never seen before.
[...] technically you could say they're stealing[...]
Except that no one is stealing anything! There are technical, legal definitions of theft, which don't include the act of making digital copies. It would be difficult to make an unambiguous law so broad that it prohibited both burglary and file sharing. So — technically — you couldn't correctly claim that. Note that I'm not mincing words because I want to assuage my own guilt (I'm an amoralist.), but simply because you said "technically."
Sophistry aside, it's hard to understand the purpose of largely unenforceable laws. The total prohibition of file copying doesn't have popular support. Even if a minority find it immoral or unethical, they will probably need to come to terms with the reality of it. Is it more likely that people will stop sharing files, or that the relevant laws will slowly change as public support for them wanes? From a historical perspective, the illegalization of file sharing does not seem very different from the Prohibition. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) The largest difference I can see is that illegal file sharing hasn't created a criminal class to supply its (cooperative, non-profit) black market.
I spent a little while and found it. The title translates to Analysis Magic Schoolgirl Misaki Magical Open.
There was even a
slashdot.jp article on it back in 2004. I'd tell you what the conclusion of the comments was, but there weren't any posters both technically capable of understanding the book and interested in it, so almost all of the comments were off-topic. I'm glad the English version of slashdot isn't like that...
Three cameras are installed on the Keihin Express line at Shinagawa, Yokohama and Haneda Airport stations. There's also one in the Marunouchi Building by Tokyo station and one at their lab in Yokosuka. They'll be testing until the end of March. It seems like the image processing is only being performed at Marunouchi building and Haneda.
I go through Tokyo station on the way home, so I'll post later if I can find the thing.
Slashdot Mirror
I call immediate bullshit.
I see your bullshit and raise.
Yeah, I think the best solution is to compress the proposed password using a large (compression) dictionary, and require the compressed password to be above a certain number of bits in length.
I assume that's what current password strength checkers do. Does anyone on slashdot know?
Yeah, of course you're right. Is it a feeble excuse to say that I'm used to reading with okurigana? :-(
Yeah, I was wondering about the characters on the cover, behind the CJKV.
I was familiar with the first three, the kanji used to represent China (the character for middle), Japan (the character for the sun) and Korea (the character for... Korea), but I didn't realize the last one was the character for Vietnam. It normally means to wake or cause. FWIW, the old name for Vietnam in Japanese seems to be "etsunan", which I guess is pretty close phonetically.
Yeah, there are tuna farms in Japan, but they don't breed the tuna, they just catch them young and then fatten them inside a big net.
I think the one great programmer he's talking about is Guy L Steele. (That was supposed to be obvious, though, right?) If your definition of "great programmer" doesn't describe Guy L Steele, maybe it isn't a good definition ;-)
If you'd read much of what Paul Graham has written, or much of the literature on Lisp, or even functional languages in general, you'd know that no-one is advocating using Lisp all the time. One of the almost-magical things about Lisp is how easy it is to make domain specific languages that truly are suited to the task at hand.
You are certainly correct that a great programmer uses the right tool for the job. This includes knowing when the right tool for the job doesn't exist yet, and judging the costs and benefits of writing a tool perfectly suited to the task at hand.
One of the key pieces in video compression is detecting motion vectors automatically from video. Once you have motion vectors, there are algorithms to turn sequences of motion vectors into 3D models. I've seen video with an automatically generated wireframe on it before, but I couldn't find the link.
Small, 3D screens that don't require the use of glasses are already commercially available. I saw ads for 3D screen cellphones all the time on Japanese TV and on the train. I thought it was interesting, but not worth buying a new phone.
Enough to also do it to everyone around you.
Enough to put you on a plane full of people who deserve it, too.
Just click on the "change" button after the summary and the comment subjects display correctly. Whatever the problem is with the cached story pages, comments.pl is fine.
As a nihilist, I'll do my best to explain.
There is no objective meaning to life. Any meaning that you might try to assign to life is ultimately arbitrary. There is no objective measure by which the "goodness" or "badness" of one's actions might be determined. (Neither "success" nor "failure" are meaningful, either.)
You might be able to justify (for instance) Humanism to yourself, but once you start to believe that the values of Humanists are somehow objectively true, or that they give your life purpose, you've begun to delude yourself.
The word cannibal is derived from the name of a cannibalistic tribe that Columbus recorded. The word has broadened from its original meaning of (a specific tribe of) humans who eat humans to include animals that eat their own kind.
You've tried to create your own scientific definition of an ill-defined word that dates from the 15th century. Unless you justify your definition in some way, this is just a tautology.
Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.
And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.
For the sake of numeracy, I thought I should point out that the fibonacci sequence is the sum of an increasing exponential function and a decreasing exponential function. Its asymptotic behaviour is the same as an exponential function.
.5 when approximating the xth term of the fibonacci sequence.
f(x)=ab^x
f(x+2)=f(x+1)+f(x)
b^2=b+1
b0=(1+sqrt(5))/2
b1=(1-sqrt(5))/2
f(x)=a0b0^x+a1b1^x
f(0)=a0+a1=1
f(1)=a0b0+a1b1=1
a0(b0-b1)=1-b1
a0=(1-b1)/sqrt(5)
a1(b0-b1)=b0-1
a1=(b0-1)/sqrt(5)
The absolute value of the a1b1^x term is always less than 1/2 for positive x, so the a0b0^x term (which is an exponential function) has an error of less than
I think Microsoft is being kinda generous by offering to pay for a huge chunk of it.
I think the city of Redmond is being kinda generous by not raising Microsoft's taxes in order to pay for the entire cost of the bridge necessitated by Microsoft.
He's already told you the one thing we need to do to end the recession. The proceeds from the video game tax will be used to create more jobs.
I'm not smart enough to understand why he doesn't advocate simply taxing knives to reduce knife related crimes.
The most important feature for those devices is a barcode scanner. Barcode scanning is the only way to enter data from labels that is cheap, reliable and fast enough to be practical.
The second most important consideration is ergonomic. Workers will be holding and operating the devices constantly, so they're usually built with handles.
Without either feature, a touchscreen netbook would be worthless in a warehouse.
But as I'm sure there's someone who actually lives in japan around on the forums, please post back and tell us what the real story is... I only talk to people online.
Ok.
But they don't use it either. Here's the facts: The phone market for Japan is the tightest in the world. Frankly, the phones sold there are generations ahead of what's sold elsewhere in the world. These phones do video teleconferencing, can be used to do wireless credit card transactions, digital TV, some of them can be used as train/bus passes, and even interface with vending machines (just point and click, and viola).
Most phones have a video call option, but I've never used it, nor do I know anyone that uses it. Digital TV (called 1seg) is popular now, and it might be a feature that effects purchasing decisions. Pasmo/Suica (digital train pass cards) are already widely used, so there's not a real need to add the feature to a phone. Vending machines are everywhere, but the kind you're talking about must be pretty rare. So, yes, Digital TV is an important feature, but that hardly equates to the iPhone having a poor feature set. You'd be hard pressed to find any phones that truly outshine the iPhone here.
The "iphone" frankly has a poor feature set, and oh yes -- it is not a flip phone. The japanese love their flip phones from everything I've read.
Rather than characterizing the Japanese as flip-phone lovers, you should realize that fads are very important to them. The iPod is (was?) popular and trendy, and so is the iPhone. People will just buy whatever everyone else is talking about, until their friends start talking about the next big thing.
So no, Japan doesn't hate the iphone, there is no conspiracy, Apple is simply behind the times in that country. But hey, if it makes you feel any better -- I doubt Comcast is making any inroads there either. ;)
The iPhone seems to be pretty well received. It's sold by Softbank, the mobile carrier that uses Brad Pitt in its commercials (although not in its iPhone commercials), so I guess that means it's trendy.
Is division actually slower than looping?
To provide a counterpoint, I've had 7 French coworkers, and two Spanish coworkers. Of those, two of the French and one of the Spaniards were let go because the had absolutely no technical understanding (and were untrainable). The rest only know a single programming language and even then misuse even the most common idioms.
Of course there are many talented European programmers. Just be aware that Sturgeon's Law applies here, too.
Wow, thank you for finding that. I'm amazed. I concede the point entirely.
What is your interpretation of the "intent to deprive" clause? The section on evidence doesn't seem to list any evidence of intent to deprive that would apply to duplicating music. If there is no intent to deprive, unauthorized control over property is not theft under the Indiana definition. However, I'm sure the application of the code is much more complicated in real life.
From your description of the business model, it seems like the sales of previously released games are used to commission the production of the next game. In a hypothetical future world populated only by pirates, there are no sales dollars, and so no new games get made.
Couldn't the business model be changed slightly so that the game is released after players contribute enough to pay off its development? (It's been called a ransom.) Even today gamers have to pay for games they haven't played yet when they purchase from retail stores. I don't know if such a change is practical, but if the situation is as bleak as you describe, hopefully something will change.
The Prohibition was unenforcable. To use your distasteful example, if the majority of Americans enjoyed raping others on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, it would be impossible to arrest and try all of them, as well. Consider a rape trial where it's likely that the judge or the prosecutor and most of the jury are open and unapologetic rapists.
Maybe more importantly, the Prohibition actually led to increased drinking:
When Prohibition was introduced, I hoped that it would be widely supported by public opinion and the day would soon come when the evil effects of alcohol would be recognized. I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe that this has not been the result. Instead, drinking has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have openly ignored Prohibition; respect for the law has been greatly lessened; and crime has increased to a level never seen before.
-John D. Rockefeller, Jr.(stolen shamelessly from Wikipedia)
[...] technically you could say they're stealing[...]
Except that no one is stealing anything! There are technical, legal definitions of theft, which don't include the act of making digital copies. It would be difficult to make an unambiguous law so broad that it prohibited both burglary and file sharing. So — technically — you couldn't correctly claim that. Note that I'm not mincing words because I want to assuage my own guilt (I'm an amoralist.), but simply because you said "technically."
Sophistry aside, it's hard to understand the purpose of largely unenforceable laws. The total prohibition of file copying doesn't have popular support. Even if a minority find it immoral or unethical, they will probably need to come to terms with the reality of it. Is it more likely that people will stop sharing files, or that the relevant laws will slowly change as public support for them wanes? From a historical perspective, the illegalization of file sharing does not seem very different from the Prohibition. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) The largest difference I can see is that illegal file sharing hasn't created a criminal class to supply its (cooperative, non-profit) black market.
I spent a little while and found it. The title translates to Analysis Magic Schoolgirl Misaki Magical Open.
There was even a slashdot.jp article on it back in 2004. I'd tell you what the conclusion of the comments was, but there weren't any posters both technically capable of understanding the book and interested in it, so almost all of the comments were off-topic. I'm glad the English version of slashdot isn't like that...
I looked at the press release a bit closer and you can see that it's measuring two things: the number of people in the area and the number of people facing the advertisement. Here's a picture of the unit.
I was wondering, too, so I looked up the original report on NTT's website.
Three cameras are installed on the Keihin Express line at Shinagawa, Yokohama and Haneda Airport stations. There's also one in the Marunouchi Building by Tokyo station and one at their lab in Yokosuka. They'll be testing until the end of March. It seems like the image processing is only being performed at Marunouchi building and Haneda.
I go through Tokyo station on the way home, so I'll post later if I can find the thing.