The cop certainly knew this guy couldn't get up after being tazed. I guess the cop's intent of shouting "Get up" was to show the bystanders that this guy was not obeying his orders, in the hope that the bystanders would thought the guy refused to get up.
Yau himself never said this. It's another renown Chinese mathematician (named Yang, Le) that was quoted by a Chinese jornalist. I guess journalists all over the world are just the same: they keep misquoting people. Hard to imagine a real mathematician would make this kind of stupid mistake. This quote has actually become a well-known joke on the journalists on Chinese web-forums and blogs.
Some mathematitians that were quoted in this New Yorker artcile have expressed anger that the authors distorted their words. Here's a collection of those mathmettians clarification, both English and the Chinese translation:
I'll paste just the English version here so everybody can have a look:
====
From Dan Stroock at MIT:
Clarification
I, like several others whom Sylvia Nasar interviewed, am shocked and angered
by the article which she and Gruber wrote for the New Yorker. Havingseen
Yau in action during his June conference on string theory, Nasar ledme to
believe that she was fascinated by S-T Yau and asked me my opinionabout
his activities. I told her that I greatly admire Yau's efforts tosupport
young Chinese mathematicians and to break down the ossifiedpower structure
in the Chinese academic establishment. I then told her that I sometimes
have doubts about his methodology. In particular, I toldher that, at least
to my ears, Yau weakens his case and lays himself opento his enemies by
sounding too self-promoting.
As it appears in her article, she has purposefully distorted my statementand
made it unforgivably misleading. Like the rest of us, Yau has hisfaults,
but, unlike most of us, his virtues outweigh his faults.Unfortunately,
Nasar
used my statement to bolster her casethat the opposite is true, and for
this I cannot forgive her.
====
From Michael Anderson at Stony Brook:
Dear Yau,
I am furious, and completely shocked, at what Sylvia Nasar wrote. Her quote
of me is completely wrong and baseless. There are other factual mistakes
in the article, in addition to those you pointed out.
I have left her phone and email messages this evening and hope to speakto
her tomorrow at the latest to clear this up. I want her to remove this
statement
completely from the article. It serves
no purpose and contains no factual information; I view it as stupid gossip
unworthy of a paper like the New Yorker. At the moment, the print version
has not appeared and so it might be possible to fix this still. I spent
several hours with S. Nasar on the phone talking about Perelman, Poincare
, etc but it seems I was too naive and I'm now disgusted in believing
this journalist would report factually.
I regret very much this quote falsely attributed to me and will do whatever
I can to have it removed.
I will keep you informed as I know more.
Yours, Michael
====
More clarification from Anderson:
Many of you have probably seen the New Yorker article by Sylvia Nasar and
David Gruber on Perelman and the Poincare conjecture.
In many respects, its very interesting and a pleasure to read. However,it
contains a number of inaccuracies and downright errors.
I spent several hours talking with Sylvia Nasar trying to dissuade her from
incorporating the Tian-Yau fights into the article, since it was completely
irrelevant and I didn't see the point of dragging readers through the mud
.
Obviously I was not successful.
The quote attributed to me on Yau is completely inaccurate and distortedfrom
some remarks I made to her in a quite different context; I made itexplicit
to her that the remarks I was making in that context were purely
speculative
and had no basis in fact. I did not give her my permission to quote me on
this, even with the qualification of speculation.
There are other inaccuracies about Stony Brook. One for instance is
theimplication
that Tian at MIT was the first to invite Perelman to the USto give talks
. This is of course false - we at Stony Brook were the first to do so. I
stressed in my talks with her the role Stony Brook played,yet she focusses
on the single talk Grisha gave at Princeton, listing a collection of
eminent mathematicians, none of whom is a geometer/topologist.
I was not given an opportun
The idea of sending an AI to communicate with aliens, or communicating with alien AIs that we received, is exactly the same as what Gregory Benford wrote in "Hydrogen Wall" in Asimov's SF Magazine, Oct/Nov 2003. A review of which can be found here. Trading some information for some other information is but a minor task of those alien AIs: they have much grander motivations, which you wouldn't expect until near the end of the story. That's a great story, in fact one of the best hard science fiction stories I've read in recent years. I wonder if John Nunn has heard about the story somewhere, do did he come up with this idea independently?
It is not in China's interest to see a neighboring country possess nuclear weapons. More generally, no country would ever like to see any other political force to possess nuclear weaposn, no matter how strong the alliance between the country and the political force would be. That is why Soviet Union did not want to help China develop nuclear weapon even when they were still in honey-moon in 1950's (hence Chinese had to do it on their own). That is why U.S. forced Taiwan to stop nuclear weapon development in 1970's.
Not the content of the actual encrypted message. Distributing the encryption keys in this way guarantees that whenever a bit in the key is intercepted by an eavesdropper, the sender/receiver would detect it so that could abandon this bit. Then the receiver uses the key to encrypt the actual message and sends it on an open chanel, which is still interceptable by an eavesdropper, but as long as the encryption is One-Time Pads encryption and the previous key generation uses a true random source, crypt-analysis againsted the ciphertext would be impossible.
Slashdot Mirror
Who hired class B people?
The cop certainly knew this guy couldn't get up after being tazed. I guess the cop's intent of shouting "Get up" was to show the bystanders that this guy was not obeying his orders, in the hope that the bystanders would thought the guy refused to get up.
25% Perelman
30% Yau & Co.
Yau himself never said this. It's another renown Chinese mathematician (named Yang, Le) that was quoted by a Chinese jornalist. I guess journalists all over the world are just the same: they keep misquoting people. Hard to imagine a real mathematician would make this kind of stupid mistake. This quote has actually become a well-known joke on the journalists on Chinese web-forums and blogs.
http://mitbbs.com/mitbbs_article_t.php?board=Mathe matics&gid=10840706&ftype=0
I'll paste just the English version here so everybody can have a look:
====
From Dan Stroock at MIT:
Clarification
I, like several others whom Sylvia Nasar interviewed, am shocked and angered by the article which she and Gruber wrote for the New Yorker. Havingseen Yau in action during his June conference on string theory, Nasar ledme to believe that she was fascinated by S-T Yau and asked me my opinionabout his activities. I told her that I greatly admire Yau's efforts tosupport young Chinese mathematicians and to break down the ossifiedpower structure in the Chinese academic establishment. I then told her that I sometimes have doubts about his methodology. In particular, I toldher that, at least to my ears, Yau weakens his case and lays himself opento his enemies by sounding too self-promoting. As it appears in her article, she has purposefully distorted my statementand made it unforgivably misleading. Like the rest of us, Yau has hisfaults, but, unlike most of us, his virtues outweigh his faults.Unfortunately, Nasar used my statement to bolster her casethat the opposite is true, and for this I cannot forgive her.
====
From Michael Anderson at Stony Brook:
Dear Yau,
I am furious, and completely shocked, at what Sylvia Nasar wrote. Her quote of me is completely wrong and baseless. There are other factual mistakes in the article, in addition to those you pointed out. I have left her phone and email messages this evening and hope to speakto her tomorrow at the latest to clear this up. I want her to remove this statement completely from the article. It serves no purpose and contains no factual information; I view it as stupid gossip unworthy of a paper like the New Yorker. At the moment, the print version has not appeared and so it might be possible to fix this still. I spent several hours with S. Nasar on the phone talking about Perelman, Poincare , etc but it seems I was too naive and I'm now disgusted in believing this journalist would report factually. I regret very much this quote falsely attributed to me and will do whatever I can to have it removed. I will keep you informed as I know more.
Yours, Michael
====
More clarification from Anderson:
Many of you have probably seen the New Yorker article by Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber on Perelman and the Poincare conjecture. In many respects, its very interesting and a pleasure to read. However,it contains a number of inaccuracies and downright errors. I spent several hours talking with Sylvia Nasar trying to dissuade her from incorporating the Tian-Yau fights into the article, since it was completely irrelevant and I didn't see the point of dragging readers through the mud . Obviously I was not successful. The quote attributed to me on Yau is completely inaccurate and distortedfrom some remarks I made to her in a quite different context; I made itexplicit to her that the remarks I was making in that context were purely speculative and had no basis in fact. I did not give her my permission to quote me on this, even with the qualification of speculation. There are other inaccuracies about Stony Brook. One for instance is theimplication that Tian at MIT was the first to invite Perelman to the USto give talks . This is of course false - we at Stony Brook were the first to do so. I stressed in my talks with her the role Stony Brook played,yet she focusses on the single talk Grisha gave at Princeton, listing a collection of eminent mathematicians, none of whom is a geometer/topologist. I was not given an opportun
The idea of sending an AI to communicate with aliens, or communicating with alien AIs that we received, is exactly the same as what Gregory Benford wrote in "Hydrogen Wall" in Asimov's SF Magazine, Oct/Nov 2003. A review of which can be found here. Trading some information for some other information is but a minor task of those alien AIs: they have much grander motivations, which you wouldn't expect until near the end of the story. That's a great story, in fact one of the best hard science fiction stories I've read in recent years. I wonder if John Nunn has heard about the story somewhere, do did he come up with this idea independently?
For online music search...
It is not in China's interest to see a neighboring country possess nuclear weapons. More generally, no country would ever like to see any other political force to possess nuclear weaposn, no matter how strong the alliance between the country and the political force would be. That is why Soviet Union did not want to help China develop nuclear weapon even when they were still in honey-moon in 1950's (hence Chinese had to do it on their own). That is why U.S. forced Taiwan to stop nuclear weapon development in 1970's.
Not the content of the actual encrypted message. Distributing the encryption keys in this way guarantees that whenever a bit in the key is intercepted by an eavesdropper, the sender/receiver would detect it so that could abandon this bit. Then the receiver uses the key to encrypt the actual message and sends it on an open chanel, which is still interceptable by an eavesdropper, but as long as the encryption is One-Time Pads encryption and the previous key generation uses a true random source, crypt-analysis againsted the ciphertext would be impossible.
Circulated on usenet about 8 or 9 years ago: Move over RealAudio, because RealAroma has arrived...