... Geeks are clumped together in two superdense regions: Silicon Valley, CA, and Dallas (Richardson), TX. This is the opposite of what happens with most groups, wherein the group has lighter concentrations over a much larger area. A perfect example of the latter would be Southern baptists, who are spread out all over the Southern states, but in heavy enough concentrations to make political change. Plus, as a whole, geeks make up a very small percentage of the population.
And perhaps this is how it should be. While it would be a fairly simple task to get an official into public office at the local or state level, but even in California and Texas, the majority of the state is not geeky, and could really care less about our issues.
Now to apply what we've learned to the national level... In Dallas, we're extremely concerned about copyright and patent restrictions, IPR and the like. But do you think that the potato farmers in Idaho or the Cattle ranches in Wisconsin give a damn about DVD Decryption? And why should they? It has absolutely no bearing on their lives. This would be the same as if a representative from Wisconsin were trying to pass a national bill to allow Dairy farmers the right to hold IPOs. Geeks wouldn't give a damn either.
The problem with the situation as is derives from the fact that public policy as far as Copyright and Patent infringement is developed at the highest echelon of government, where 1) The littlest information is actually known about these issues, and 2) It is only necessary for slimy corporations and Industry groups to grease the palms of a few key political figures.
I'm not actually suggesting that these policies should be determined at the state level, but what if they were? Then in order for the MPAA to stand any ground, they would require passage of their key laws in 50 states (Why 50? If not all 50, then one would only need to base operations frowned upon in the particular state to which the law did not apply). This means they would have to grease quite a few more palms, and the outrage from the communities in SuperDense Geek areas would quickly cause the ellected official to fall from office.
Basically, this all boils down to three points: 1) Geeks do not have anywhere near the population count to deserve the kind of Political Representation necessary to enforce the kind of change your speaking of, and 2) People only get officials elected. Then it is essentially the PAC that tells the official what to do while in office, and 3) The problem here is that corporations and Industry groups are able to consolidate their voice into one yell, as opposed to the chatter heard from Geeks across the US.
-- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
There was a/. article a few months ago about this. IBM has the capability now to produce circuits that can handle 90 Ghz. Here's the link... slashdot.org/articles/99/12/06/ 0823227.shtml
-- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
...saying that its 1 GHz processor is 15% faster than its rivals (AMD?) when the Athlons are approximately 40% faster than the P3s of the same clockrate? Are they referring to the speed of the internet on the P3 1G vs the Athlon 1G?:)
But seriously. Maybe they consider the Athlon 700 to be their competitor? (1.4 * 700 = 980)
Ah well. I personally can't wait for the SMP DDR Mobos to start falling out from AMD so I can run dual 700s. Awwwiyeah. -- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
I can play all the games just as good if not better...
Perhaps you're not aware of the amount of power in the PS2. As a synonym, the PS2 does to your computer what a dual K7-800 does to a 286. It violates it. The PS2 has more than 6 times the Floating point power of a Cray Supercomputer (valued at $16M US). It can do over 75 million poly/s. Even the Annihilator Pro only comes out at near 10-15M. The PS2 draws at a near-constant 3600 fps. 3600. It redraws the same frame 60 times before you ever see it. This means that effects such as fog and lighting are performed effortlessly with 0 loss in framerate. The PS2 will support higher res with no loss in framerate.
Anyways, my point is that the PS2 will absolutely destroy your computer in terms of graphics capability, and will continue to do so for at least another two years or so.
PS2 Floating Point Performance: 6.2 GFLOPS Cray2 FP Performance: 1.0 GFLOP PS2 Post T&L Poly Fill rate: 75M poly/s APro Post T&L Poly Fill rate: 10-15M poly/s
This just absolutely pisses me off. People want the internet to be free, but at the same time they want to have their privacy on the net too. I'm sorry, but you can't have it both ways.
If you want the government not to regulate the content of the internet, then its simple. Keep them off of it. Once you allow the government to start passing privacy laws regarding the net, what is to stop them from passing laws regarding the content of the 'net itself? What next, will they start prosecuting based on posts in newsgroups?
These are perfect oppurtunities for we, the internet community, to show the government that we are able to regulate the net ourselves. The course of action is simple.
1) Sites that violate users' privacy are listed at a privacy site, or a forum is maintained in a high visibility area. This allows net consumers to have a common area where they can check to see if the vendor they're purchasing from will attempt to screw their privacy.
2) E-mail is sent to the offending site, indicating what was wrong, and that we as net consumers will cease to visit their site if the situation is not resolved.
This will, in effect, set a net boycott on sites who violate users' privacy, which will either cause the company to rectify their error, or will cause them to take their business off the net. (No revenue is typically a 'Bad Thing'.)
But I for one am sick and tired of hearing all these privacy advocates whine for legislation about privacy on the net, and then hear the same advocates turn around and cry when bills are passed to censor content. You can't have your cake and eat it too. -- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
... the eigth page. Then the FUD hit the fan. After all they're talk about Intel vs. Athlon, (which I particularly enjoyed, being an Athlon owner), the Author had to go on and prove how little he actually knew about the future of computers. Page 8
According to the author, the Microsoft X-Box will not only be more powerful then the PSX2, but will also be cheaper! That's absolutely amazing! According to every other article I've read, the X-Box is supposedly less powerful and over twice as expensive. He mentions that the X-Box is due to use an advanced "chipset from Nvidia" but last I checked (yesterday) nVidia didn't have any processors that could come close to the PS2s raw computing power. In fact, the next generation of 3-D Graphics chips on the PC market are set to still run approximately 1/10th the polys/second of the Emotion Chip, and lets not even get into the Gigapixel ratings between the two.
He then goes on to talk about how the Dreamcast is an "X-Box Lite". Apparently because it runs CE the Dreamcast is super-sweet. But not only that, he suggests that because the DC runs CE and contains DirectX explains why there's so many titles already available for the DC.
Could you please show me where they are? I can't seem to find any good titles except for three or four that shipped back in September. When is the DC going to be releasing the 100's of titles they promise and push back every month?
Its this kind of idiocy in reporting that makes me absolutley HATE the media. -- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
@Home has repeatedly been asked to fix their problem (ticketing....) Now, their being told that they're not allowed to drive until they fix their bus.
AFAICT, @home users will still be able to read newsgroups, they simply won't be able to post. (And sense not being able to post doesn't affect porno and warez collection, I don't expect to see too many @Homers complaining about this.)
Not to say that all @Homers only collect Porno and Warez on newsgroups, but... -- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
There's a reason you don't see pirated DVDs. Its not because the piracy in and of itself is impossible, either.
Its due to the fact that DVD copying equipment is prohibitively expensive! And not even good enough quality to pirate with!!
The media for sale is $25 a disc! And that's for 4.75 GB, One-sided, single-layer media. Nevermind the fact that DVDs you purchase are 19 GB two-sided double-layered DVDs... So in other words, it would take you two RAMs for each side of a ROM. Hmm... Lemme think. $25 for a real version or $100 for one that I'm going to have to swap in the middle of the movie (Remember LaserDisc?).
This is not actually a dificult choice!
One other thing (about trading DVDs online): DVD Quality Video/Audio is approximately 1 meg per second. Most Cable rates don't even come CLOSE to touching half of this. And even still, if you were to download one side of a DVD movie, it would cost you 9 GIGS of HDD space, And 9 Gigs of download time! (At 250K a second this would take approximately 8 hours) -- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
Uhhh... This will most certainly be moderated down as flamebait or just plain derogatory, but you are so full of crap its almost amazing! Are your eyes brown?:)
There are many of us out here who are excellent coders but don't allow ourselves to fall into the trap that we can only be good at one thing.
Although not a code monkey, take Ricky Williams for instance. He won the Heisman trophy (collegiate football) last year. He maintained a 3.53 overall GPA at UT in the school of Business (extremely difficult). His schooling at UT was paid for by the Cardinals because they wanted to draft him for baseball right out of high school.
The fact is that if you accept that you are only good at one thing and never strive to expand yourself you are no better than the single-minded individuals you seek to condemn.
We have to devote our hearts and souls to the trade in order to learn how to write good code.
I don't mean any disrespect, but I believe that many of my fellow code-monkeys will agree: Good coders are born, not taught. -- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
Uhhh... This will most certainly be moderated down as flamebait or just plain derogatory, but you are so full of crap its almost amazing! Are your eyes brown?:)
There are many of us out here who are excellent coders but don't allow ourselves to fall into the trap that we can only be good at one thing.
Although not a code monkey, take Ricki Williams for instance. He won the Heisman trophy (collegiate football) last year. He maintained a 3.53 overall GPA at UT in the school of Business (extremely difficult). His schooling at UT was paid for by the Cardinals because they wanted to draft him for baseball right out of high school.
The fact is that if you accept that you are only good at one thing and never strive to expand yourself you are no better than the jocks you seek to condemn.
-- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
Errgggh!! I'm so tired...
on
Happy Odd Day!
·
· Score: 1
...of people getting this WRONG. The millenium starts in 2001. Not 2000. People partying like its 1999 should really be partying like its 2000. Obviously at this point its fairly moot, but we're not ringing in the new millenium this year. (There was NOT a 0 AD, the calendar begins with 1 AD, so each Millenium begins with x001). This wouldn't be so damned frustrating except that the media has been talking about the coming of the new millenium for so long that they've forgotten that its still over a year away. The only reason that 2000 is really only special is because it is the dawn of a new Century. -- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
99% of the time, students are not taking down notes of the professor's original thoughts, but rather what the professor is reiterating from something that was originally thunk anywhere from 10 to thousands of years ago.
Its not as though this company is asking students to post notes from research experiments they participated in.
And furthermore, aren't my notes my interpretation of what the professor has to say? So in actuallity, all I'm really giving up is my intellectual rights to property that was [given to |purchased by ] me.
I actually plan on posting all of the source code and notes from all of the projects I've had to work on in school, not so that other kids can cheat off of my hard work, but so that they can benefit from someone else who's been there and done that.
To put it another way, lets take a typical CS course in C++. Let's suppose that we are working on a class BigInt, in which we plan on implementing all the usual functions for Integers of arbitrary size. Obviously, the best algorithms that we are going to find come (originally) from Knuth. Did the professor get permission from Knuth to use his intellectual property? Hell no!
I think sometimes schools [file|consider] lawsuits like this one just to get their names in the papers. They know that they are wrong, but they figure the publicity is worth the effort.
-- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
There is an irony to your post. You claim to hate malinformed posts, yet you yourself have just posted an entire truckload of crap.
What a wonderful fact. Unfortunately it's incorrect. If you look at the server stats all across the web, you will see that IE is definitely winning the battle. Anyway, Communicator 4 and IE 4 were both released under equally free terms (and equally large downloads) so your argument about the cost of running either is vacuous.
I love this. You understand of course that not all traffic has to go to external sites, right? At my company, the most efficient way of recieving information from another group is typically the web. I can get information from employees in India, England, France, or down the hall by hitting their websites. None of this is recorded in statistics regarding web traffic. But the fact of the matter is that again the COMMERCIAL sector, meaning Industry is MUCH larger than the PRIVATE sector. (Or, home users.) Why? Its numbers. See my original post.
And Free to you, a home user != free to Industry. Where do you think Netscape makes their money? If they gave away their product to Industry, they'd go broke. They sell licenses to companies like mine, where using the free version of Netscape would be a violation of their TOS. (And we could get sued out the wazoo.) The same is true for IE. To use IE for business purposes, one must have a license, which must be purchased.
Second, assuming blithely that Windows is all smoke and mirrors, and will remain so forever, is simply a mistake. If you really believe that the tens of thousands of programmers at Microsoft with IQ in the 130's and up are incapable of producing a decent product, you need to re-examine your assumptions.
Who do you think writes kernel code for Linux? Infinitely many monkeys typing on infinitely many keyboards? Jiminy Christmas! The same brains from industry are the same people who contribute to the kernel for Linux. Plus we get the benefit of countless college professors, students, and freelance coders. I guarentee you that every one of the programmers who write code for Linux are every bit as talented and more than those at MS. And there's two major differences. 1) Linux programmers work for love. There is no higher motivation. Ask any employer at any company. 2) Whereas there aren't actually 10's of thousands of programmers working on the Windows OS, there actually are 10's of thousands of coders working on applications for linux. And more importantly, every user of Linux takes part in the most important step: Debugging.
Please visit my web page for more information. Its not finished yet, but you'll get a gist of what I'm talking about.
Oh, and finally, I'm not suggesting that the community be complacent with where we are, but rather that we continue on with what we're doing. With every user, we gain more and more momentum. This is anything but complacency.
-- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
... That seem to think that one aspect of Linux can cause us to lose the "war" with Windows. To most of us linux users, its not a war to begin with. I could care less if others use Linux, I know that I can use it, it takes care of my needs, and I never have to reboot my machine. If there is a Desktop war going on, I wonder who's fighting? MS certainly sees us as a threat, but we couldn't care less about them.
Upon further investigation, it turns out that Netscape apparantly did not "like" the Java code that was being incorporated into one of the websites that Trish frequents. My solution: Turn off Java. I have yet to come upon any problems after extensive testing of Netscape with thousands of pages loaded with Java. There was an initial misconfiguration of Netscape, (actually X) wherein a necessary font for Java was not installed by default, but once installed, I haven't hit any pages with Java which were unviewable.
Then Microsoft created Internet Explorer. Then Microsoft won the "Browser War". Then webmasters began using some of the "advanced" features of Internet Explorer, shutting out Netscape users. Again, with the ignorance. MS has hardly won the browser war. The problem with many authors of Tech articles today is that they don't understand the computer market AT ALL. They continue to naively think that just because some particular product doesn't have market share in one particular market, then it must not have market share in ANY market. The fact is that Netscape STILL dominates the Browser war for two reasons: 1) Companies use netscape on all their UNIX boxes. 2) Companies use netscape on all their Win95 boxes. IE wasn't free when the majority of companies purchased their licenses, and Netscape continues to dominate the market share in the commercial sector, which is roughly twice the size of the personal or private sector.(After all, everyone who works in virtually any white collar job has at least one machine they have at work, but not all of them have PCs at home.
If we fail, we will lose the war. We're not at war.
If we fail, we will lose the war. We're not at war.
If we fail, we will lose the war. We're not at war.
If we fail, we will lose the war. We're not at war.
When comparing M$ Windows to Linux, let us consider an analogy. You see Windows is kind of like a Trojan horse. Sure, it looks all big and impressive, and when you bring it inside the walls, it opens up and bites you in the rear end.
But linux is like a Juggernaut to the Trojan horse. Every day it gets bigger, more robust, and more difficult to stop. Eventually MS will have to bow out to Linux not because Linux will declare war on Windows, but because Windows will simply pale in comparison.
You see, one of the most important differences between Windows and Linux is that Windows is all smoke and mirrors (marketing) whereas Linux is an product that is actually well made and capable of delivering on its promises. The public will grow tired of the illusion sooner or later, its all a matter of time. -- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
... to a rat is like a human standing in a ten-foot-tall microwave. Of course you expect to lose some brain cells.
This once again proves that too much of anything is a Bad Thing. Nutrasweet, Mountain Dew, Viagara, it all causes cancer in lab rats.
But then who do you know of that consumes 10 pounds worth of Nutrasweet, drinks 300 gallons of Mountain Dew and stays erect 24 hours a day, 365 days a year doped up on Viagara?
A long term study should be performed on humans, but I doubt one will occur; its too costly and what on Earth would cell companies do when the results indicated the worst?
-- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
Okay, so its not that anyone is going to read this far anyways, but I'd like to add my two cents.
I'm now a Sophomore here at UTD. I love the campus. I love the professors. I love the people. My school just broke the 10,000 enrollment barrier this year. Our school is small enough now that only 6% of courses are taught by non-proffessors (TAs). I've yet to have a course where I felt the professor didn't care about the material, or where the professor felt that teaching and students were intruding on his research time.
We compete every year in AI fairs, and virtually every year we place second or first. (We're locked in a perpetual battle with MIT.) Our chess team is the best in the hemisphere, second best in the world. Perhaps you haven't heard of us before, but perhaps you have. In either event, you'll be hearing a lot more from us in the future.
UTD is very fortunate in that we sit right in the center of the Telecom Corridor. (In case you don't know, the Telecom Corridor houses over 600 different Telecom companies, including Alcatel, Ericcson, Nortel, GTE, SWBell, and MANY others) Our CS and EE programs are influenced by industry all around us. Oftentimes, the Dean of the EE/CS school can be seen chatting with various executives from local companies, discussing curriculum and why things are being handled the way they are. Oftentimes, industry petitions the school to add courses or oppurtunities for students to get out and work in the industry, gaining invaluable real-world experience.
But my post isn't about that. I'd like to focus on my curriculum at UTD. I take approximately 15-17 hours a semester. Out of the 129 hours required for my CS degree, a whopping 70+ are explicitly CS courses. Several others are CS-electives. 24 are state-required, 11 are Sciences, and approximately 12 are free and advanced electives (Non-CS).
CS students are started out first year in languages, typically C++. Second year, its on to discrete mathematics and computer organization and assembler, and then onto data structures. The Courseload for Juniors and Seniors varies, but it always comprises of 75% or more theory courses. Courses offered include Operating System Design principles and database theory. Courses regarding specific languages are also available, but are typically not required, as has been pointed out in so many other posts: these are not education, but a limited subset thereof.
Anyways, the point of this post was to refute claims that some others had made that Universities failed to teach students how to think. On the contrary, I feel that my college education so far has been invaluable and irreplaceable. -- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
Susan Struthers (I think) said it a little more bluntly "I don't understand why it's worse to show a breast being kissed on TV or the movies, than for it to be hacked off."
Okay... Useless correction here, but I heard this statement this very morning.. It wasn't Susan Strothers, but rather Jack Nicholson who said:
"If you suck on a tit the movie gets an R rating. If you hack the tit off with an axe it will be PG."
I confirmed this at famous-quotes.com... -- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
Actually, I totally disagree with this statement for this year
The reason the prices got so high this year was because of the quake in Taiwan. Most of the chips that you put in your PC were manufactured in Taiwan, and a lot of the major chip manufacturers suffered serious losses in the quake and the aftermath.
Although many of the chipmakers did come out alright, just the fear of the chip shortage drove prices sky-high.
This is not unlike what happens in other industries, for example oil. A few months ago, I could put gas in my car for less than a dollar a gallon. The first time it has ever happened in my life. For a while, I could even find it for $.93US a gallon. But then there was a teeny-tiny little oil scare, (thanks Saddam!) and BAM! oil prices sky-rocket. It costs me $1.25US per gallon now, if I'm lucky!
I do agree that prices tend to fluctuate a bit every year, but that's to be expected. Prices on most commodities fluctuate according to some calendar. This year is not a typical fluctuation for memory prices. Or any other chip prices that begin to take a rise of 50%-150%.
-- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
Please be aware that I am currently filing patents on all of the following. If you engage in any of these activities, be aware that you owe me royalties, your first-born child, or your soul.
Using a 'CRT' to view output from a 'computer' Typing on a 'keyboard' to create input for a 'computer' Using a 'mouse' to create input for a 'computer' Reading/. Reading the word 'Linux' Using 'Linux' Thinking Existing Eating Sleeping Breathing Flatulating (No, the last two are not related)
If my office comes up with anymore patents, you will be notified! - Geez. This is absolutely ridiculuous...
-- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
I mean, c'mon. Why don't they just tatoo it on the kids faces at birth?
Then they don't have to worry about making the kids wear some silly ID badge.
I wonder if these kids have the right to refuse to use their SSN? According to the gubament, they're supposed to be able to refuse to have their SSN used as a form of identification. For that matter, they're supposed to be able to refuse to ever include their SSN on their records to begin with.
I have a friend that I work with who is adament about his SSN showing up in places it doesn't belong. Apparently he's had problems in the past when he was in the USAF about people getting ahold of his SSN and doing things they shouldn't. He would get the blame or worse, the bills.
I always teased him about it, but now I wonder if he wasn't right. This is absolutely ridiculuous.
Perhaps next the state will require that these kids have ID badges that include information on their GPA and class ranking, permanent record and will require the students to answer to numbers instead of their names.
This is a classic issue of public safety vs. personal freedom/privacy. In the wake of the Columbine massacre and the plotted shootings at schools around the nation, the faculty and parents are now willing to sacrifice their kids' personal freedoms and privacies for a little bit more security. But its not like these badges are going to help any.
Suppose the two assailants at Columbine had been wearing ID badges. Would that have helped any of the victims? Could they've said, "Gee, that's Harris, and now that I know his SSN, he can't kill me?" C'mon people, GET A GRIP!
This form of security is useful for faculty members at elementary schools because those kids can see that if someone doesn't have a badge, perhaps they shouldn't speak to them. But so far I am unaware of any school shootings taking place where student identification would've helped the victims in any way, shape or form.
Alas... At least the kids in Louisiana get to learn about evolution. Stupid Kansas.
-- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
For one thing, we are the telcom capital of the world... Okay, so maybe its not the internet now, but you wait... All these companies will be/are shifting their business towards internet switches, etc..
PS: How many companies are here, you ask? Just in a teeny tiny little area here in Richardson (north of Dallas), we have over 600 different telcom companies. That's not counting the companies in other parts of Richardson or anywhere else in or around Dallas.. (Its about a 2mi * 5mi range called the Telcom corridor)
Ahhhh well... Perhaps in a few years we'll get recognition.:(
-- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
"strong encryption most likely cannot be broken even by the NSA, in any amount of time, no matter how many computers they throw at it, unless they've made some fundamental breakthrough like quantum computers." This is incorrect... For reference, please view the following: www.distributed.net. The problem with current encryption is that it can be broken through brute force, given that enough time and computing power is thrown at it. Furthermore, current encryption techniques have not been proven (nor will they likely ever be proven) to be NP complete, so its always possible that someone will discover a shortcut through current encryption that reduces the problems to polynomial time. (Or worse, constant time.) -- "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime... It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
>MTV has all the sincerity and integrity of a >bleached blonde silicon-enhanced porno whore, and >if we don't want the culture they push they'll >just keep pushing anyhow...
I know quite a few "bleached-blonde silicon-enhanced porno" stars/whores who would be quite insulted to be associated with MTV.
See this is not how I learned the problem... Ours was an Optimization problem, but we were forced to find the minimum distance required. This meant that we had to test every possible solution / 2, because we could say that A-->B == B-->A, where distance was concerned.
The problem as posed only requires us to work until we find 1 solution. This problem can easily be reduced to linear time, given the proper model of coding.
In addition, the problem as posed will take 2^(N-2) time, on average to solve, whereas the average time to solve the problem as I learned it would _always_ be 2^(N-1)...
To determine any path that is less than X units is not too difficult a task, because again this only requires 2^(N-2) tests on average to determine.
In addition, I wrote a routine that would solve this problem in very short time, but it was based on the premise that any city could travel to any other city, thusly highways and byways were thrown out..... (The solution was very simple, and I could find psuedo code or the actual code if you want it...)
Slashdot Mirror
... Geeks are clumped together in two superdense regions: Silicon Valley, CA, and Dallas (Richardson), TX. This is the opposite of what happens with most groups, wherein the group has lighter concentrations over a much larger area. A perfect example of the latter would be Southern baptists, who are spread out all over the Southern states, but in heavy enough concentrations to make political change. Plus, as a whole, geeks make up a very small percentage of the population.
And perhaps this is how it should be. While it would be a fairly simple task to get an official into public office at the local or state level, but even in California and Texas, the majority of the state is not geeky, and could really care less about our issues.
Now to apply what we've learned to the national level... In Dallas, we're extremely concerned about copyright and patent restrictions, IPR and the like. But do you think that the potato farmers in Idaho or the Cattle ranches in Wisconsin give a damn about DVD Decryption? And why should they? It has absolutely no bearing on their lives. This would be the same as if a representative from Wisconsin were trying to pass a national bill to allow Dairy farmers the right to hold IPOs. Geeks wouldn't give a damn either.
The problem with the situation as is derives from the fact that public policy as far as Copyright and Patent infringement is developed at the highest echelon of government, where 1) The littlest information is actually known about these issues, and 2) It is only necessary for slimy corporations and Industry groups to grease the palms of a few key political figures.
I'm not actually suggesting that these policies should be determined at the state level, but what if they were? Then in order for the MPAA to stand any ground, they would require passage of their key laws in 50 states (Why 50? If not all 50, then one would only need to base operations frowned upon in the particular state to which the law did not apply). This means they would have to grease quite a few more palms, and the outrage from the communities in SuperDense Geek areas would quickly cause the ellected official to fall from office.
Basically, this all boils down to three points:
1) Geeks do not have anywhere near the population count to deserve the kind of Political Representation necessary to enforce the kind of change your speaking of, and
2) People only get officials elected. Then it is essentially the PAC that tells the official what to do while in office, and
3) The problem here is that corporations and Industry groups are able to consolidate their voice into one yell, as opposed to the chatter heard from Geeks across the US.
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
There was a /. article a few months ago about this. IBM has the capability now to produce circuits that can handle 90 Ghz. Here's the link...
slashdot.org/articles/99/12/06/ 0823227.shtml
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
...saying that its 1 GHz processor is 15% faster than its rivals (AMD?) when the Athlons are approximately 40% faster than the P3s of the same clockrate? Are they referring to the speed of the internet on the P3 1G vs the Athlon 1G? :)
But seriously. Maybe they consider the Athlon 700 to be their competitor? (1.4 * 700 = 980)
Ah well. I personally can't wait for the SMP DDR Mobos to start falling out from AMD so I can run dual 700s. Awwwiyeah.
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
I can play all the games just as good if not better...
Perhaps you're not aware of the amount of power in the PS2. As a synonym, the PS2 does to your computer what a dual K7-800 does to a 286. It violates it. The PS2 has more than 6 times the Floating point power of a Cray Supercomputer (valued at $16M US). It can do over 75 million poly/s. Even the Annihilator Pro only comes out at near 10-15M. The PS2 draws at a near-constant 3600 fps. 3600. It redraws the same frame 60 times before you ever see it. This means that effects such as fog and lighting are performed effortlessly with 0 loss in framerate. The PS2 will support higher res with no loss in framerate.
Anyways, my point is that the PS2 will absolutely destroy your computer in terms of graphics capability, and will continue to do so for at least another two years or so.
PS2 Floating Point Performance: 6.2 GFLOPS
Cray2 FP Performance: 1.0 GFLOP
PS2 Post T&L Poly Fill rate: 75M poly/s
APro Post T&L Poly Fill rate: 10-15M poly/s
psx.ign.com/news/7154.html
www7.tomshardware. com/graphic/99q4/991011/geforce-01.html
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
[rant]
This just absolutely pisses me off. People want the internet to be free, but at the same time they want to have their privacy on the net too. I'm sorry, but you can't have it both ways.
If you want the government not to regulate the content of the internet, then its simple. Keep them off of it. Once you allow the government to start passing privacy laws regarding the net, what is to stop them from passing laws regarding the content of the 'net itself? What next, will they start prosecuting based on posts in newsgroups?
These are perfect oppurtunities for we, the internet community, to show the government that we are able to regulate the net ourselves. The course of action is simple.
1) Sites that violate users' privacy are listed at a privacy site, or a forum is maintained in a high visibility area. This allows net consumers to have a common area where they can check to see if the vendor they're purchasing from will attempt to screw their privacy.
2) E-mail is sent to the offending site, indicating what was wrong, and that we as net consumers will cease to visit their site if the situation is not resolved.
This will, in effect, set a net boycott on sites who violate users' privacy, which will either cause the company to rectify their error, or will cause them to take their business off the net. (No revenue is typically a 'Bad Thing'.)
But I for one am sick and tired of hearing all these privacy advocates whine for legislation about privacy on the net, and then hear the same advocates turn around and cry when bills are passed to censor content. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
... the eigth page. Then the FUD hit the fan. After all they're talk about Intel vs. Athlon, (which I particularly enjoyed, being an Athlon owner), the Author had to go on and prove how little he actually knew about the future of computers. Page 8
According to the author, the Microsoft X-Box will not only be more powerful then the PSX2, but will also be cheaper! That's absolutely amazing! According to every other article I've read, the X-Box is supposedly less powerful and over twice as expensive. He mentions that the X-Box is due to use an advanced "chipset from Nvidia" but last I checked (yesterday) nVidia didn't have any processors that could come close to the PS2s raw computing power. In fact, the next generation of 3-D Graphics chips on the PC market are set to still run approximately 1/10th the polys/second of the Emotion Chip, and lets not even get into the Gigapixel ratings between the two.
He then goes on to talk about how the Dreamcast is an "X-Box Lite". Apparently because it runs CE the Dreamcast is super-sweet. But not only that, he suggests that because the DC runs CE and contains DirectX explains why there's so many titles already available for the DC.
Could you please show me where they are? I can't seem to find any good titles except for three or four that shipped back in September. When is the DC going to be releasing the 100's of titles they promise and push back every month?
Its this kind of idiocy in reporting that makes me absolutley HATE the media.
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
You do ticket them and/or revoke their licenses.
@Home has repeatedly been asked to fix their problem (ticketing....) Now, their being told that they're not allowed to drive until they fix their bus.
AFAICT, @home users will still be able to read newsgroups, they simply won't be able to post. (And sense not being able to post doesn't affect porno and warez collection, I don't expect to see too many @Homers complaining about this.)
Not to say that all @Homers only collect Porno and Warez on newsgroups, but...
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
There's a reason you don't see pirated DVDs. Its not because the piracy in and of itself is impossible, either.
Its due to the fact that DVD copying equipment is prohibitively expensive! And not even good enough quality to pirate with!!
The media for sale is $25 a disc! And that's for 4.75 GB, One-sided, single-layer media. Nevermind the fact that DVDs you purchase are 19 GB two-sided double-layered DVDs... So in other words, it would take you two RAMs for each side of a ROM. Hmm... Lemme think. $25 for a real version or $100 for one that I'm going to have to swap in the middle of the movie (Remember LaserDisc?).
This is not actually a dificult choice!
One other thing (about trading DVDs online): DVD Quality Video/Audio is approximately 1 meg per second. Most Cable rates don't even come CLOSE to touching half of this. And even still, if you were to download one side of a DVD movie, it would cost you 9 GIGS of HDD space, And 9 Gigs of download time! (At 250K a second this would take approximately 8 hours)
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
Uhhh... This will most certainly be moderated down as flamebait or just plain derogatory, but you are so full of crap its almost amazing! Are your eyes brown? :)
There are many of us out here who are excellent coders but don't allow ourselves to fall into the trap that we can only be good at one thing.
Although not a code monkey, take Ricky Williams for instance. He won the Heisman trophy (collegiate football) last year. He maintained a 3.53 overall GPA at UT in the school of Business (extremely difficult). His schooling at UT was paid for by the Cardinals because they wanted to draft him for baseball right out of high school.
The fact is that if you accept that you are only good at one thing and never strive to expand yourself you are no better than the single-minded individuals you seek to condemn.
We have to devote our hearts and souls to the trade in order to learn how to write good code.
I don't mean any disrespect, but I believe that many of my fellow code-monkeys will agree: Good coders are born, not taught.
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
Uhhh... This will most certainly be moderated down as flamebait or just plain derogatory, but you are so full of crap its almost amazing! Are your eyes brown? :)
There are many of us out here who are excellent coders but don't allow ourselves to fall into the trap that we can only be good at one thing.
Although not a code monkey, take Ricki Williams for instance. He won the Heisman trophy (collegiate football) last year. He maintained a 3.53 overall GPA at UT in the school of Business (extremely difficult). His schooling at UT was paid for by the Cardinals because they wanted to draft him for baseball right out of high school.
The fact is that if you accept that you are only good at one thing and never strive to expand yourself you are no better than the jocks you seek to condemn.
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
...of people getting this WRONG. The millenium starts in 2001. Not 2000. People partying like its 1999 should really be partying like its 2000. Obviously at this point its fairly moot, but we're not ringing in the new millenium this year. (There was NOT a 0 AD, the calendar begins with 1 AD, so each Millenium begins with x001). This wouldn't be so damned frustrating except that the media has been talking about the coming of the new millenium for so long that they've forgotten that its still over a year away. The only reason that 2000 is really only special is because it is the dawn of a new Century.
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
99% of the time, students are not taking down notes of the professor's original thoughts, but rather what the professor is reiterating from something that was originally thunk anywhere from 10 to thousands of years ago.
Its not as though this company is asking students to post notes from research experiments they participated in.
And furthermore, aren't my notes my interpretation of what the professor has to say? So in actuallity, all I'm really giving up is my intellectual rights to property that was [given to |purchased by ] me.
I actually plan on posting all of the source code and notes from all of the projects I've had to work on in school, not so that other kids can cheat off of my hard work, but so that they can benefit from someone else who's been there and done that.
To put it another way, lets take a typical CS course in C++. Let's suppose that we are working on a class BigInt, in which we plan on implementing all the usual functions for Integers of arbitrary size. Obviously, the best algorithms that we are going to find come (originally) from Knuth. Did the professor get permission from Knuth to use his intellectual property? Hell no!
I think sometimes schools [file|consider] lawsuits like this one just to get their names in the papers. They know that they are wrong, but they figure the publicity is worth the effort.
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
... at least we know that they aren't willing to release a crappy product just to get it out on time.
Of course I'll be a bit upset when they finally do release DII and I still have to download megs and megs of bug fixes....
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
Mr Woo-
There is an irony to your post. You claim to hate malinformed posts, yet you yourself have just posted an entire truckload of crap.
What a wonderful fact. Unfortunately it's incorrect. If you look at the server stats all across the web, you will see that IE is definitely winning the battle. Anyway, Communicator 4 and IE 4 were both released under equally free terms (and equally large downloads) so your argument about the cost of running either is vacuous.
I love this. You understand of course that not all traffic has to go to external sites, right? At my company, the most efficient way of recieving information from another group is typically the web. I can get information from employees in India, England, France, or down the hall by hitting their websites. None of this is recorded in statistics regarding web traffic. But the fact of the matter is that again the COMMERCIAL sector, meaning Industry is MUCH larger than the PRIVATE sector. (Or, home users.) Why? Its numbers. See my original post.
And Free to you, a home user != free to Industry. Where do you think Netscape makes their money? If they gave away their product to Industry, they'd go broke. They sell licenses to companies like mine, where using the free version of Netscape would be a violation of their TOS. (And we could get sued out the wazoo.) The same is true for IE. To use IE for business purposes, one must have a license, which must be purchased.
Second, assuming blithely that Windows is all smoke and mirrors, and will remain so forever, is simply a mistake. If you really believe that the tens of thousands of programmers at Microsoft with IQ in the 130's and up are incapable of producing a decent product, you need to re-examine your assumptions.
Who do you think writes kernel code for Linux? Infinitely many monkeys typing on infinitely many keyboards? Jiminy Christmas! The same brains from industry are the same people who contribute to the kernel for Linux. Plus we get the benefit of countless college professors, students, and freelance coders. I guarentee you that every one of the programmers who write code for Linux are every bit as talented and more than those at MS. And there's two major differences.
1) Linux programmers work for love. There is no higher motivation. Ask any employer at any company.
2) Whereas there aren't actually 10's of thousands of programmers working on the Windows OS, there actually are 10's of thousands of coders working on applications for linux. And more importantly, every user of Linux takes part in the most important step: Debugging.
Please visit my web page for more information. Its not finished yet, but you'll get a gist of what I'm talking about.
Oh, and finally, I'm not suggesting that the community be complacent with where we are, but rather that we continue on with what we're doing. With every user, we gain more and more momentum. This is anything but complacency.
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
... That seem to think that one aspect of Linux can cause us to lose the "war" with Windows. To most of us linux users, its not a war to begin with. I could care less if others use Linux, I know that I can use it, it takes care of my needs, and I never have to reboot my machine. If there is a Desktop war going on, I wonder who's fighting? MS certainly sees us as a threat, but we couldn't care less about them.
Upon further investigation, it turns out that Netscape apparantly did not "like" the Java code that was being incorporated into one of the websites that Trish frequents. My solution: Turn off Java.
I have yet to come upon any problems after extensive testing of Netscape with thousands of pages loaded with Java. There was an initial misconfiguration of Netscape, (actually X) wherein a necessary font for Java was not installed by default, but once installed, I haven't hit any pages with Java which were unviewable.
Then Microsoft created Internet Explorer. Then Microsoft won the "Browser War". Then webmasters began using some of the "advanced" features of Internet Explorer, shutting out Netscape users.
Again, with the ignorance. MS has hardly won the browser war. The problem with many authors of Tech articles today is that they don't understand the computer market AT ALL. They continue to naively think that just because some particular product doesn't have market share in one particular market, then it must not have market share in ANY market. The fact is that Netscape STILL dominates the Browser war for two reasons:
1) Companies use netscape on all their UNIX boxes.
2) Companies use netscape on all their Win95 boxes. IE wasn't free when the majority of companies purchased their licenses, and Netscape continues to dominate the market share in the commercial sector, which is roughly twice the size of the personal or private sector.(After all, everyone who works in virtually any white collar job has at least one machine they have at work, but not all of them have PCs at home.
If we fail, we will lose the war.
We're not at war.
If we fail, we will lose the war.
We're not at war.
If we fail, we will lose the war.
We're not at war.
If we fail, we will lose the war.
We're not at war.
When comparing M$ Windows to Linux, let us consider an analogy. You see Windows is kind of like a Trojan horse. Sure, it looks all big and impressive, and when you bring it inside the walls, it opens up and bites you in the rear end.
But linux is like a Juggernaut to the Trojan horse. Every day it gets bigger, more robust, and more difficult to stop. Eventually MS will have to bow out to Linux not because Linux will declare war on Windows, but because Windows will simply pale in comparison.
You see, one of the most important differences between Windows and Linux is that Windows is all smoke and mirrors (marketing) whereas Linux is an product that is actually well made and capable of delivering on its promises. The public will grow tired of the illusion sooner or later, its all a matter of time.
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
... to a rat is like a human standing in a ten-foot-tall microwave. Of course you expect to lose some brain cells.
This once again proves that too much of anything is a Bad Thing. Nutrasweet, Mountain Dew, Viagara, it all causes cancer in lab rats.
But then who do you know of that consumes 10 pounds worth of Nutrasweet, drinks 300 gallons of Mountain Dew and stays erect 24 hours a day, 365 days a year doped up on Viagara?
A long term study should be performed on humans, but I doubt one will occur; its too costly and what on Earth would cell companies do when the results indicated the worst?
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
Okay, so its not that anyone is going to read this far anyways, but I'd like to add my two cents.
I'm now a Sophomore here at UTD. I love the campus. I love the professors. I love the people. My school just broke the 10,000 enrollment barrier this year. Our school is small enough now that only 6% of courses are taught by non-proffessors (TAs). I've yet to have a course where I felt the professor didn't care about the material, or where the professor felt that teaching and students were intruding on his research time.
We compete every year in AI fairs, and virtually every year we place second or first. (We're locked in a perpetual battle with MIT.) Our chess team is the best in the hemisphere, second best in the world. Perhaps you haven't heard of us before, but perhaps you have. In either event, you'll be hearing a lot more from us in the future.
UTD is very fortunate in that we sit right in the center of the Telecom Corridor. (In case you don't know, the Telecom Corridor houses over 600 different Telecom companies, including Alcatel, Ericcson, Nortel, GTE, SWBell, and MANY others) Our CS and EE programs are influenced by industry all around us. Oftentimes, the Dean of the EE/CS school can be seen chatting with various executives from local companies, discussing curriculum and why things are being handled the way they are. Oftentimes, industry petitions the school to add courses or oppurtunities for students to get out and work in the industry, gaining invaluable real-world experience.
But my post isn't about that. I'd like to focus on my curriculum at UTD. I take approximately 15-17 hours a semester. Out of the 129 hours required for my CS degree, a whopping 70+ are explicitly CS courses. Several others are CS-electives. 24 are state-required, 11 are Sciences, and approximately 12 are free and advanced electives (Non-CS).
CS students are started out first year in languages, typically C++. Second year, its on to discrete mathematics and computer organization and assembler, and then onto data structures. The Courseload for Juniors and Seniors varies, but it always comprises of 75% or more theory courses. Courses offered include Operating System Design principles and database theory. Courses regarding specific languages are also available, but are typically not required, as has been pointed out in so many other posts: these are not education, but a limited subset thereof.
Anyways, the point of this post was to refute claims that some others had made that Universities failed to teach students how to think. On the contrary, I feel that my college education so far has been invaluable and irreplaceable.
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
Susan Struthers (I think) said it a little more bluntly "I don't understand why it's worse to show a breast being kissed on TV or the movies, than for it to be hacked off."
Okay... Useless correction here, but I heard this statement this very morning.. It wasn't Susan Strothers, but rather Jack Nicholson who said:
"If you suck on a tit the movie gets an R rating. If you hack the tit off with an axe it will be PG."
I confirmed this at famous-quotes.com...
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
Actually, I totally disagree with this statement for this year
The reason the prices got so high this year was because of the quake in Taiwan. Most of the chips that you put in your PC were manufactured in Taiwan, and a lot of the major chip manufacturers suffered serious losses in the quake and the aftermath.
Although many of the chipmakers did come out alright, just the fear of the chip shortage drove prices sky-high.
This is not unlike what happens in other industries, for example oil. A few months ago, I could put gas in my car for less than a dollar a gallon. The first time it has ever happened in my life. For a while, I could even find it for $.93US a gallon. But then there was a teeny-tiny little oil scare, (thanks Saddam!) and BAM! oil prices sky-rocket. It costs me $1.25US per gallon now, if I'm lucky!
I do agree that prices tend to fluctuate a bit every year, but that's to be expected. Prices on most commodities fluctuate according to some calendar. This year is not a typical fluctuation for memory prices. Or any other chip prices that begin to take a rise of 50%-150%.
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
Please be aware that I am currently filing patents on all of the following. If you engage in any of these activities, be aware that you owe me royalties, your first-born child, or your soul.
/.
Using a 'CRT' to view output from a 'computer'
Typing on a 'keyboard' to create input for a 'computer'
Using a 'mouse' to create input for a 'computer'
Reading
Reading the word 'Linux'
Using 'Linux'
Thinking
Existing
Eating
Sleeping
Breathing
Flatulating
(No, the last two are not related)
If my office comes up with anymore patents, you will be notified!
-
Geez. This is absolutely ridiculuous...
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
I mean, c'mon. Why don't they just tatoo it on the kids faces at birth?
Then they don't have to worry about making the kids wear some silly ID badge.
I wonder if these kids have the right to refuse to use their SSN? According to the gubament, they're supposed to be able to refuse to have their SSN used as a form of identification. For that matter, they're supposed to be able to refuse to ever include their SSN on their records to begin with.
I have a friend that I work with who is adament about his SSN showing up in places it doesn't belong. Apparently he's had problems in the past when he was in the USAF about people getting ahold of his SSN and doing things they shouldn't. He would get the blame or worse, the bills.
I always teased him about it, but now I wonder if he wasn't right. This is absolutely ridiculuous.
Perhaps next the state will require that these kids have ID badges that include information on their GPA and class ranking, permanent record and will require the students to answer to numbers instead of their names.
This is a classic issue of public safety vs. personal freedom/privacy. In the wake of the Columbine massacre and the plotted shootings at schools around the nation, the faculty and parents are now willing to sacrifice their kids' personal freedoms and privacies for a little bit more security. But its not like these badges are going to help any.
Suppose the two assailants at Columbine had been wearing ID badges. Would that have helped any of the victims? Could they've said, "Gee, that's Harris, and now that I know his SSN, he can't kill me?" C'mon people, GET A GRIP!
This form of security is useful for faculty members at elementary schools because those kids can see that if someone doesn't have a badge, perhaps they shouldn't speak to them. But so far I am unaware of any school shootings taking place where student identification would've helped the victims in any way, shape or form.
Alas... At least the kids in Louisiana get to learn about evolution. Stupid Kansas.
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
Why?
:(
For one thing, we are the telcom capital of the world... Okay, so maybe its not the internet now, but you wait... All these companies will be/are shifting their business towards internet switches, etc..
PS: How many companies are here, you ask? Just in a teeny tiny little area here in Richardson (north of Dallas), we have over 600 different telcom companies. That's not counting the companies in other parts of Richardson or anywhere else in or around Dallas.. (Its about a 2mi * 5mi range called the Telcom corridor)
Ahhhh well... Perhaps in a few years we'll get recognition.
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
"strong encryption most likely cannot be broken even by the NSA, in any amount of time, no matter how many computers they throw at it, unless they've made some fundamental breakthrough like quantum computers." This is incorrect... For reference, please view the following: www.distributed.net. The problem with current encryption is that it can be broken through brute force, given that enough time and computing power is thrown at it. Furthermore, current encryption techniques have not been proven (nor will they likely ever be proven) to be NP complete, so its always possible that someone will discover a shortcut through current encryption that reduces the problems to polynomial time. (Or worse, constant time.)
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
>MTV has all the sincerity and integrity of a
>bleached blonde silicon-enhanced porno whore, and
>if we don't want the culture they push they'll
>just keep pushing anyhow...
I know quite a few "bleached-blonde silicon-enhanced porno" stars/whores who would be quite insulted to be associated with MTV.
You should apologize!
See this is not how I learned the problem... Ours was an Optimization problem, but we were forced to find the minimum distance required. This meant that we had to test every possible solution / 2, because we could say that A-->B == B-->A, where distance was concerned.
The problem as posed only requires us to work until we find 1 solution. This problem can easily be reduced to linear time, given the proper model of coding.
In addition, the problem as posed will take 2^(N-2) time, on average to solve, whereas the average time to solve the problem as I learned it would _always_ be 2^(N-1)...
To determine any path that is less than X units is not too difficult a task, because again this only requires 2^(N-2) tests on average to determine.
In addition, I wrote a routine that would solve this problem in very short time, but it was based on the premise that any city could travel to any other city, thusly highways and byways were thrown out..... (The solution was very simple, and I could find psuedo code or the actual code if you want it...)