Except quakes > 7.9 are not 1000 year events. There have been dozens in the last 50 years. At any given highly active location (like Japan) the chance of one in 50 years is pretty high.
The largest earthquake ever recorded was 9.5 in 1960 in Chile. The Japan quake was only the 5th largest. Any nuke plant built after 1960 should have been designed to withstand at least a 9.5, especially in a place like Japan. Designing for 7.9 is accepting an inevitable disaster.
I wouldn't want to fly in a plane built by an engineer that didn't know physics, and I wouldn't want to run software written by a programmer that didn't know computer science. Both are possible, but tend to end badly.
Why on earth would you be writing a neural network in LISP? LISP is great for symbolic AI but ridiculous for something like NN - C or Java would be so much better.
Heat pumps actually do really well at using barely warm water to heat buildings. You can even use cold water out of the ground (which is probably like 60 F, i.e. colder than you want you house to be but much warmer than the outside). Slightly warm water from the data center would be even better.
But I wasn't even thinking of that when I wrote the GGP post. If you are pumping it long distances through the ground to get to the destination there will not be much of a noticeable temp change by the time it reaches the destination.
It's a shame they don't use a sealed system and just pass the water through. It would require much more water of course, but you could co-locate the data center with the water treatment plant and then just pass all the city's water through the data center to cool it and on to the consumers to drink, so no water would be wasted (although in this case I am not sure who would trust water that had been passed though an NSA controlled facility - if it was Google that would be OK because we know they do no evil:)
My last HP laptop was 10 years ago, the hard drive died in less than 1 year and I had to take it in twice before I could convince the idiots at the authorized service center that my hard drive was going bad - it was making the click of death and running extremely slowly because of drive errors, so it should not have been hard to diagnose. Bad drives can happen to anyone but should not been a hassle to get them fixed. Apple on the other hand just replaces my parts when I complain, no questions. Dell seems pretty good too but my experience with them has just been corporate machines with gold-plated service contracts. I won't be buying HP anyway so I don't care what bloatware they load on it.
Computers in the real world (by which I assume you mean personal computers) can easily solve TSP for 10 cities. Maybe even 100. The threshold for feasibility of any NP problem depends on the size of the input. At some point it is feasible for all computers, and at some point it is not feasible even for the biggest computers.
A more precise definition would be "Turing-computable". TSP is computable. The halting problem is not.
The lack of internet didn't stop the American Revolution
Yes, but there wasn't much technology on the government side either. You may not need a completely level playing field for revolution, but it has to be in the same ballpark. If the government has modern high-speed communication and automatic weapons, and you just have a few muzzleloader rifles and some lanterns in a church steeple for communication, you are not going to have a successful revolution no matter how passionate you are. Modern communication is necessary for a modern revolution.
"Once I worked out how much money I could make if this was my full-time job, I got a lot less excited," Srivastava says. "I'd have to travel from store to store and spend 45 seconds cracking each card. I estimated that I could expect to make about $600 a day. That's not bad. But to be honest, I make more as a consultant, and I find consulting to be a lot more interesting than scratch lottery tickets."
I'm just vaguely annoyed. I do advanced install on every piece of software I install. Skype allows you to not install the toolbar, and so does just about every other piece of software with this annoyance. It so common and there is a work around so I'm not going to try and shop around for products that don't do it. Still I wish they wouldn't.
Yes, but that's unlikely. I haven't looked at this particular algorithm but the exponent constant in polynomial algorithms rarely gets above 3. If someone shows it really is n^(2^1000000000000000000) in this case then we have nothing to worry about, until then I will assume it is small.
Incidentally, this wouldn't necessarily imply that encryption is worthless: it may still be too slow to be practical.
No, it means good encryption will be much less practical. Computers will always get faster so "too slow" is not a good argument. If P != NP you can always make encryption too hard to break by increasing the key size - the cost to encrypt and decrypt only goes up polynomial with key size but cost to break it goes up exponentially, which makes it too hard even for those with supercomputers. If P = NP it means the cost to break it only goes up polynomially. This put the cost to encrypt in the same realm as the cost to break. So you can use much bigger keys but it becomes more expensive and may stop petty criminals but won't stop people with supercomputers.
Ridiculous numbers, because no such train exists that can travel that speed between NYC and LA, and even if it did exist it would certainly make multiple stops.
The people we most want getting prompt STD infection results are the ones who already aren't competent to keep safe by practicing safe sex.
And you still can't get prompt results, it takes up to 6 months between initial infection and when you test positive for many STDs. If you go to a clinic they will drill that into your head, but with an over the counter test the buyer might remain clueless and think they are STD free when they are really spreading the disease around. Nobody will read the fine print on the test.
"Foolproof" is the #1 design objective, because fools have a higher rate of being the most important user segment.
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Except quakes > 7.9 are not 1000 year events. There have been dozens in the last 50 years. At any given highly active location (like Japan) the chance of one in 50 years is pretty high.
Except that in those countries they use a comma and not a period as the decimal separator (almost all counties outside North America use comma).
The largest earthquake ever recorded was 9.5 in 1960 in Chile. The Japan quake was only the 5th largest. Any nuke plant built after 1960 should have been designed to withstand at least a 9.5, especially in a place like Japan. Designing for 7.9 is accepting an inevitable disaster.
A good question is why is it still in the research stage? The idea dates back to 1947 and the first working prototype was in 1966.
TMI (1979) occurred before Chernobyl (1986). The film (The China Syndrome) was release 12 days before the TMI accident, so it was very timely.
I wouldn't want to fly in a plane built by an engineer that didn't know physics, and I wouldn't want to run software written by a programmer that didn't know computer science. Both are possible, but tend to end badly.
Why on earth would you be writing a neural network in LISP? LISP is great for symbolic AI but ridiculous for something like NN - C or Java would be so much better.
Heat pumps actually do really well at using barely warm water to heat buildings. You can even use cold water out of the ground (which is probably like 60 F, i.e. colder than you want you house to be but much warmer than the outside). Slightly warm water from the data center would be even better.
But I wasn't even thinking of that when I wrote the GGP post. If you are pumping it long distances through the ground to get to the destination there will not be much of a noticeable temp change by the time it reaches the destination.
It's a shame they don't use a sealed system and just pass the water through. It would require much more water of course, but you could co-locate the data center with the water treatment plant and then just pass all the city's water through the data center to cool it and on to the consumers to drink, so no water would be wasted (although in this case I am not sure who would trust water that had been passed though an NSA controlled facility - if it was Google that would be OK because we know they do no evil :)
My last HP laptop was 10 years ago, the hard drive died in less than 1 year and I had to take it in twice before I could convince the idiots at the authorized service center that my hard drive was going bad - it was making the click of death and running extremely slowly because of drive errors, so it should not have been hard to diagnose. Bad drives can happen to anyone but should not been a hassle to get them fixed. Apple on the other hand just replaces my parts when I complain, no questions. Dell seems pretty good too but my experience with them has just been corporate machines with gold-plated service contracts. I won't be buying HP anyway so I don't care what bloatware they load on it.
Anyone acting on behalf of the government should have to follow the same rules as the government.
Most security cameras only record video and not audio because of these laws. As silly as it is the law only applies to audio.
Computers in the real world (by which I assume you mean personal computers) can easily solve TSP for 10 cities. Maybe even 100. The threshold for feasibility of any NP problem depends on the size of the input. At some point it is feasible for all computers, and at some point it is not feasible even for the biggest computers.
A more precise definition would be "Turing-computable". TSP is computable. The halting problem is not.
The lack of internet didn't stop the American Revolution
Yes, but there wasn't much technology on the government side either. You may not need a completely level playing field for revolution, but it has to be in the same ballpark. If the government has modern high-speed communication and automatic weapons, and you just have a few muzzleloader rifles and some lanterns in a church steeple for communication, you are not going to have a successful revolution no matter how passionate you are. Modern communication is necessary for a modern revolution.
based on XUL (pronounced ZUUL). I ain't afraid of no app.
from TFA:
"Once I worked out how much money I could make if this was my full-time job, I got a lot less excited," Srivastava says. "I'd have to travel from store to store and spend 45 seconds cracking each card. I estimated that I could expect to make about $600 a day. That's not bad. But to be honest, I make more as a consultant, and I find consulting to be a lot more interesting than scratch lottery tickets."
I'm just vaguely annoyed. I do advanced install on every piece of software I install. Skype allows you to not install the toolbar, and so does just about every other piece of software with this annoyance. It so common and there is a work around so I'm not going to try and shop around for products that don't do it. Still I wish they wouldn't.
I think the demographic that might watch Fringe has little chance of getting to any base with Jill Cheerleader
I nicknamed this show Cringe because of how I reacted every time I watched an episode. 'Nuff said.
Yes, but that's unlikely. I haven't looked at this particular algorithm but the exponent constant in polynomial algorithms rarely gets above 3. If someone shows it really is n^(2^1000000000000000000) in this case then we have nothing to worry about, until then I will assume it is small.
Incidentally, this wouldn't necessarily imply that encryption is worthless: it may still be too slow to be practical.
No, it means good encryption will be much less practical. Computers will always get faster so "too slow" is not a good argument. If P != NP you can always make encryption too hard to break by increasing the key size - the cost to encrypt and decrypt only goes up polynomial with key size but cost to break it goes up exponentially, which makes it too hard even for those with supercomputers. If P = NP it means the cost to break it only goes up polynomially. This put the cost to encrypt in the same realm as the cost to break. So you can use much bigger keys but it becomes more expensive and may stop petty criminals but won't stop people with supercomputers.
Ridiculous numbers, because no such train exists that can travel that speed between NYC and LA, and even if it did exist it would certainly make multiple stops.
also: not a planet, neener neener http://xkcd.com/482/
Sorry, but I've used AIX and it is not a perfectly reasonable OS.
The people we most want getting prompt STD infection results are the ones who already aren't competent to keep safe by practicing safe sex.
And you still can't get prompt results, it takes up to 6 months between initial infection and when you test positive for many STDs. If you go to a clinic they will drill that into your head, but with an over the counter test the buyer might remain clueless and think they are STD free when they are really spreading the disease around. Nobody will read the fine print on the test.
"Foolproof" is the #1 design objective, because fools have a higher rate of being the most important user segment.
hilarious