I read all my gmail accounts using POP/SMTP in a real mail program, so I don't see any advertising anyway. Won't make a difference. Except if they try to figure out trends by actually keeping statistics on the content of e-mails going through their system. Hmm, maybe that's the reason I need to start using encryption. That, and to annoy the NSA of course./RS 'M-x spook'
I'm not claiming that ID is acceptable because macro-evolution isn't verifiable, I'm claiming that neither should be taught as fact.
But evolution is not being taught as fact. It is being taught as science. Just as gravity, relativity, molecular biology and plate tectonics are.
In science, there is no "fact". There is only our best supported theory so far. And that's no small praise. It means that we have found nothing better, and not for lack of trying!
If intelligent design wants to be treated as equal to scientific theories, let it. Let it try to get articles accepted in peer reviewed journals. Let it try to argue its merits... as long as it allows for the possibility of failing, like cold fusion, n-rays and the ether did when faced with better theories./RS
They don't say that security is better in.net than in Java. They say that the.net security model is better. If you don't use it, or don't use it correctly, or even if it is implemented badly, then actual security might be worse, but the potential is there to be better./RS
Proving that all known NP-complete classes are isomorphic was quite a big deal.
Not really, it follows directly from the definition of being NP-complete:
A decission problem is NP hard if any problem in NP can be reduced to it (by a log-space reduction).
A decission problem is NP complete if it is NP hard and is in NP itself.
Hence, if two problems are both NP complete, then they can be reduced to each other (which I assume is what you mean by "isomorphic").
The real meat was in identifying the NP complete problems, i.e., showing that the set of NP complete problems is non-empty.
"Composite factoring" isn't a decission problem, so it can't be in NP (the classes of decission problems that can be solved in polynomial time by a non-deterministic Turing machine, or equivalent, for which there are polynomially checkable proofs).
"Compositeness" (the class of decission problems on the form: given a number, is it composite) is in NP (and co-NP), and is not believed to be NP-hard.
Am I the only person that wants to know why the open source movement is so intent on diluting the browser market, instead of just improving Firefox and dominating Internet Explorer?
While there is an organization called the "Open Source Initiative", it is a mistake to think that the "open source movement" can be considered as a single entity. It makes no sense to assign an intent to it. There are people out there who write open source software... and that's the only thing they all have in common.
While there is a large number of these open source producers who do want to "dominate Internet Explorer" and beat Microsoft, there is also quite a lot of them who just wants to write better software. Not just better than IE, but better than Firefox too.
From a technical standpoint, IE was dominated years ago. Beating it in the marketplace (or whatever corresponds for a "free" product) is a different goal, and one that not all Open Source programmers care about. After all, someone using IE is mostly hurting himself.
As long as there are competent programmers and designers enough to go around, more projects is better. Competition is good for the end user.
Like Galeon for the Mac, K-Meleon is a browser focused on one platform. That allows it different tradeoffs from a cross-platform program like Firefox. Different programs with different goals. Diversity. Choice. I really can't see any problem with that./RS
XML is still bigger than JSON :)
on
Effective XML
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· Score: 1
Actually, Opera is a cross between the Mosaic and Konqueror codebases.
If you can prove that, then Opera Software would be in deep trouble. After all they are selling the browser and saying that they wrote it themselves.
More interesting, I have a copy of Opera v2.12 from February 12th 1997. Was Konqueror even started then? This is more than half a year before the KDE 1.0 meeting.
So, which Opera is it that is a cross between the Mosaic and Konqueror codebases?
Ofcourse, you could just be mistaken, and Opera is created from scratch by Opera Software.:)/RS
The content I found on the web has not been marked as copyrighted. Therefore i am not the person who broke the law. Whoever ORIGINALLY published the copyrighted materials is the one who broke the law.
It doesn't matter.
Distributing copyrighted materials without permission of the copyright owner, whether you know you are doing it or not, is certainly copyright infringement (civil)
It doesn't matter that there was no sign telling you that it was copyrighted, it still is. It doesn't matter that you don't know, you are still infringing on th copyright. Both you and whoever originally copied the work, are infringing on the copyright.
There is no such thing as "leaked" copyrighted materials. There is just plain copyright with no mitigating factors.
Don't believe you have the right to distribute any copyrighted material (i.e., any material that is not trivial) without the consent of the copyright holder, preferably in writing. (Usual disclaimers for fair use)/RS
Opera is highly configurable. Much more than any other browser I know. You can take as little screen real estate as you want.
Fonts are ugly as hell. Konqueror / Nautilus / Mozilla all look much better. Even on/.
This is on Linux? Default fonts can be changed, but if it is the rendering, I guess you might have a problem.
The speed is nice. So is a functional "cnn" takes you to "http://www.cnn.com/" and such.
Yep, works perfectly.
The things that really get you addicted are, e.g.,:
Type "g foo" in address bar to do a google search on "foo".
Mouse gestures (back forward by "rocking" the buttons (hold right, click left for back. Opposite for forward).
It's addictive!/RS
Why I bought Opera? Because it was the best browser at the time, and in many ways, it still is.
One should of course always remember that "best" is highly subjective. The things that I value include security, standard compliance, and ease of use. All points where IE fails *badly*. I use Phoenix as a backup browser, and have IE and NS4.8 for testing (and Opera 5 and 6 and Netscape 6).
There is a large amount of habit in my preferences, as there is for everybody else. I want a browser that "does it the way I want it", which is plain habit. And Opera is very habit forming. They were first with mouse gestures and MDI, and they are (in my conditioned opinion) still best. No other browser has come close to meeting my requrements there.
My browser is perhaps the program I use the most, shortly followed by Emacs (which doubles as Usenet client). Compared to a game, the usage/price ratio is much better for a browser which is used hour after hour, day after day. It was a good investment (and upgrades are only $19, I started with Opera 5 for both Unix and Windows)./RS
No one should have the freedom to harm anyone else
I would love to agree with you. Sadly I can't.
First we must decide what "harm" means. Bodily harm? Mental harm? Incarceration? Restraint? Verbal bashing? Anything that causes discomfort?
The problem is that somewhere along that scale lies the ability to protect yourself and others. Not having the freedom to harm others is not something that can be enforced, only legislated.
In order to actually prevent harm, you must be able to do something in return. That is why self defense is legal. Where is the dividing line? At "reasonable force", if I remember correctly.
Somewhere else in the scale lies society's ability to punish crimes. A law with no consequences is worthless in preventing harm. Where is the dividing line here? We can't agree on that. Some believe capital punishment is necessary, others stop at inprisonment.
Nobody has the "freedom to cause harm", but a lot of people are allowed to cause some harm in some situations. I might not like it, but I haven't found a usable alternative either./RS
The difference between UDP and TCP is not how the packets are routed, but how they are treated at the endpoints. The routing is handled by the IP header which is common to UDP and TCP.
The fake TCP header might look like a real TCP header, but if the endpoints don't exchange SYNs and ACKs, doesn't wait for redeliverey of lost packets and doesn't preserve ordering, then it isn't TCP. It's just a completely third protocol which is only understood by the end points and is tunneling UDP.
In short, the idea could work... but would probably interfere with real TCP packets./RS
Now if she
profits $50M per year and keeps it for herself...well, God's dealing with that little bit right now, I'm sure.
Then she has certainly found a loophole in the Big Law, the one that says that you cannot take it with you. She died in 1997./RS
Re:Who cares if a football player's taking steroid
on
Unmaking The Game
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· Score: 4, Insightful
2) Stop paying Verant $12.95 a month and go play one of the other 4 or 5 OnLine roleplaying games. And lose all invested time spent building up a character in EQ?
At this point, it has obviously stopped being a game, and have become an investment. Then, ask yourself: What is the expected return on that investment.
I'm not saying that I don't understand. I do! I have played a few Muds, and when I stopped playing one, there was always the feeling of "losing the investment".
At that point, it needed to be reminded that I play games to have fun. Whenever I began playing a game for other reasons than fun, it would no longer be a game (or fun, ofcourse).
I still haven't been able to find one single reason for playing Diablo 2 on Realms. I always played alone or with a few friends, so we could just host the game ourselves. Especially after single player games could be set to simulate more people in the game, Realms were pointless and laggy. So, there went my invested time again, but it was an investment with no chance of ever giving a return.
Morale (and I have to keep telling this to myself, because it is obviosuly quite counter to my nature): F**k the "investment"! I played because I had fun playing! The playing was the reward!
Most western democracies have the governing power divided into three: the legislative power, the judicial power, and the executive power. This division is considered a good thing, since it prevents any part from gaining unconditional power, and we know that power corrupts.
Some people just can't stop trying to grap power.
Take the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules. The only purpose of these rules are to prevent people from breaking the copyright law. That is, it is the legislative power's attempt to act as executive power. Not surprisingly, the DMCA can be misused in innumerable ways.
Now consider Hardware Rights Control. Again it is an attempt by someone, this time entirely outside of the government, to grab executive power. The reason for using hardware is to prevent people from breaking the copyright law. Any other feature of DRM can be programmed in software as long as people are cooperative, so hardware is only needed *against* the users who are uncooperative (e.g., those who want to make use of their fair use rights). I will be surprised if there are not innumerable abuses of hardware DRM.
The unholy marriage of DMCA and DRM should remove the need for hardware DRM. After all, is the purpose of the DMCA not to prevent people from circumventing protections, so the digital rights are safe, right? But the legislative power of DMCA is not enough for the people who want to protect "content" from the users. They want another layer of protection to make it even harder to break the law.
When hardware DRM also fails, what will their next step be? My guess is surveilance of all media-capable devices (mandatory ofcourse).
The Opera browser has, as many have said, had Multi Document Interface since... long ago (I didn't have version before 3.6 ready for checking:). There is, however, a difference between MDI and so-called "tabbed browsing".
MDI supports non-maximized windows inside the MDI frame. Tabbed browsing only supports switching between entire documents, so you cannot chose to have more than one window visible at the same time.
While I rarely use the MDI of Opera for anything except maximized windows, it does show its strength when handling windows opened dynamically by java-/ecma-script on the page, and with sizes not matching the browser's display area. All such windows are still subsumed by the MDI interface, whereas a tabbed interface would have to open windows outside of the tabbed area.
Must agree. I always set my Opera to identify as Opera. I switch whenever a site tells me that I should be using MSIE5+++ etc. (first to netscape, then to IE if needed), and I take comfort in knowing that even then, the browser-id still contains the word Opera for those who knows what to look for.
Often, I can switch back to identifying as Opera as soon as I have passed the browser-control:) The pages works fine anyway (except those using document.all in the javascript, Opera only turns that MSism on while identifying as IE).
I even made my download manager identify as Opera:)
I still find the Mozilla gestures less repsonsive and more clunky. That is probably just habit. Also, while Mozilla has tabs (but you have to do something special to open a new page as a tab), Opera has full multi-document-interface (which is fancy-pancy for having windows, which looks like tabs when they are all maximized, but they don't have to be). Missing the left-right and right-left clicking is a show-stopper though. It's like getting your first hard drive after using floppys for years. You can't remember how you got by without it. Opera is not flawless, but hell, what is. It still sparkles like a gem compared to most of everything else.
I tried to return a Win2K to the shop after having second thoughts. It was an academic license and I wasn't technically a student any more, so I failed to meet the requirements. The shop ofcourse refused to have it back (it was open, how else could I read the requirements), but in the end they gave me 90% of the price back. I complained to the local Microsoft office and they basically admitted that they had no way to force the shops to accept their "return to shop" policy even if it is printed on the box. They did give me a free WinXP Pro instead, so I'll live.
/RS
Re:I want a version of this...
on
e-Denounce
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· Score: 1
It's called razor (http://razor.sourceforge.net/index.html)
The interesting feature of DNA computing is that it is massively parallel, maybe potentially much more than anything we have build electronically so far. Also, it is not restricted to a specific clock cycle, which makes it hard to define the "computing power" of a bowl of strands. Still, they are not equivalent in power to Nondeterministic Turing Machines in general, so DNA computers will not necessarily be the end of all NP-complete problems. Probbly only those of a limited size.
Any instance of a NP complete problem can be solved by a deterministic computer in a fixed time. Often, throwing more computers at the problem lowers the time linearly, so for that specific problem, the time can be as low as wanted. It is just that the number of computers you have to throw at the problem grows very fast as the problem size grows. What they have shown here is that DNA computing works at somewhat large problems, but 2^20 could be bruteforced just as easily.
Now, you calim that Quantum Computing can solve ALL NP-complete problems. That is not known. The group of problems that are polynomially quantum-commputable are a subset of the NP problems which is not known to include any NP-complete problem. (We don't know that it doesn't, since that would mean that we knew that PNP, and we would have heard that:).
Factoring can be performed effectively by a qunatum computer, but is not NP complete. (It is in NP intersect coNP, incidentally).
> Paying out 300$ a month I could have dropped into > a savings account and easily replaced my car and > paid my medical bills if I'd had an accident.
In my country, car insurenance is mandatory not because it pays for you (that part is optional) but because it pays for whoever you run into. Makes sense to me.
Slashdot Mirror
I read all my gmail accounts using POP/SMTP in a real mail program, so I don't see any advertising anyway. Won't make a difference. Except if they try to figure out trends by actually keeping statistics on the content of e-mails going through their system. /RS 'M-x spook'
Hmm, maybe that's the reason I need to start using encryption.
That, and to annoy the NSA of course.
But evolution is not being taught as fact. It is being taught as science. Just as gravity, relativity, molecular biology and plate tectonics are.
In science, there is no "fact". There is only our best supported theory so far. And that's no small praise. It means that we have found nothing better, and not for lack of trying!
If intelligent design wants to be treated as equal to scientific theories, let it. Let it try to get articles accepted in peer reviewed journals. Let it try to argue its merits
They don't say that security is better in .net than in Java. .net security model is better. If you don't use it, or don't use it correctly, or even if it is implemented badly, then actual security might be worse, but the potential is there to be better. /RS
They say that the
Hence, if two problems are both NP complete, then they can be reduced to each other (which I assume is what you mean by "isomorphic").
The real meat was in identifying the NP complete problems, i.e., showing that the set of NP complete problems is non-empty.
"Composite factoring" isn't a decission problem, so it can't be in NP (the classes of decission problems that can be solved in polynomial time by a non-deterministic Turing machine, or equivalent, for which there are polynomially checkable proofs).
"Compositeness" (the class of decission problems on the form: given a number, is it composite) is in NP (and co-NP), and is not believed to be NP-hard.
While there is an organization called the "Open Source Initiative", it is a mistake to think that the "open source movement" can be considered as a single entity. It makes no sense to assign an intent to it. There are people out there who write open source software
While there is a large number of these open source producers who do want to "dominate Internet Explorer" and beat Microsoft, there is also quite a lot of them who just wants to write better software. Not just better than IE, but better than Firefox too.
From a technical standpoint, IE was dominated years ago. Beating it in the marketplace (or whatever corresponds for a "free" product) is a different goal, and one that not all Open Source programmers care about. After all, someone using IE is mostly hurting himself.
As long as there are competent programmers and designers enough to go around, more projects is better. Competition is good for the end user.
Like Galeon for the Mac, K-Meleon is a browser focused on one platform. That allows it different tradeoffs from a cross-platform program like Firefox. Different programs with different goals. Diversity. Choice. I really can't see any problem with that.
JSON - JavaScript Object Notation
/RS
http://www.json.org/
Enjoy!
I use Jaba too. Is it still being developed? The only page I can find that looks remotely relevant is in Russian with no English version. /RS
The content I found on the web has not been marked as copyrighted. Therefore i am not the person who broke the law. Whoever ORIGINALLY published the copyrighted materials is the one who broke the law.
It doesn't matter.
Distributing copyrighted materials without permission of the copyright owner, whether you know you are doing it or not, is certainly copyright infringement (civil)
It doesn't matter that there was no sign telling you that it was copyrighted, it still is. It doesn't matter that you don't know, you are still infringing on th copyright. Both you and whoever originally copied the work, are infringing on the copyright.
There is no such thing as "leaked" copyrighted materials. There is just plain copyright with no mitigating factors.
Don't believe you have the right to distribute any copyrighted material (i.e., any material that is not trivial) without the consent of the copyright holder, preferably in writing. (Usual disclaimers for fair use)
For the paper, try this: /RS
Google is your friend
Why I bought Opera?
/RS
Because it was the best browser at the time, and in many ways, it still is.
One should of course always remember that "best" is highly subjective. The things that I value include security, standard compliance, and ease of use. All points where IE fails *badly*. I use Phoenix as a backup browser, and have IE and NS4.8 for testing (and Opera 5 and 6 and Netscape 6).
There is a large amount of habit in my preferences, as there is for everybody else. I want a browser that "does it the way I want it", which is plain habit. And Opera is very habit forming. They were first with mouse gestures and MDI, and they are (in my conditioned opinion) still best. No other browser has come close to meeting my requrements there.
My browser is perhaps the program I use the most, shortly followed by Emacs (which doubles as Usenet client). Compared to a game, the usage/price ratio is much better for a browser which is used hour after hour, day after day. It was a good investment (and upgrades are only $19, I started with Opera 5 for both Unix and Windows).
I would love to agree with you. Sadly I can't.
First we must decide what "harm" means. Bodily harm? Mental harm? Incarceration? Restraint? Verbal bashing? Anything that causes discomfort?
The problem is that somewhere along that scale lies the ability to protect yourself and others. Not having the freedom to harm others is not something that can be enforced, only legislated.
In order to actually prevent harm, you must be able to do something in return. That is why self defense is legal. Where is the dividing line? At "reasonable force", if I remember correctly.
Somewhere else in the scale lies society's ability to punish crimes. A law with no consequences is worthless in preventing harm. Where is the dividing line here? We can't agree on that. Some believe capital punishment is necessary, others stop at inprisonment.
Nobody has the "freedom to cause harm", but a lot of people are allowed to cause some harm in some situations. I might not like it, but I haven't found a usable alternative either.
The difference between UDP and TCP is not how the packets are routed, but how they are treated at the endpoints. The routing is handled by the IP header which is common to UDP and TCP.
/RS
The fake TCP header might look like a real TCP header, but if the endpoints don't exchange SYNs and ACKs, doesn't wait for redeliverey of lost packets and doesn't preserve ordering, then it isn't TCP. It's just a completely third protocol which is only understood by the end points and is tunneling UDP.
In short, the idea could work... but would probably interfere with real TCP packets.
Then she has certainly found a loophole in the Big Law, the one that says that you cannot take it with you. She died in 1997.
At this point, it has obviously stopped being a game, and have become an investment. Then, ask yourself: What is the expected return on that investment.
I'm not saying that I don't understand. I do! I have played a few Muds, and when I stopped playing one, there was always the feeling of "losing the investment".
At that point, it needed to be reminded that I play games to have fun. Whenever I began playing a game for other reasons than fun, it would no longer be a game (or fun, ofcourse).
I still haven't been able to find one single reason for playing Diablo 2 on Realms. I always played alone or with a few friends, so we could just host the game ourselves. Especially after single player games could be set to simulate more people in the game, Realms were pointless and laggy. So, there went my invested time again, but it was an investment with no chance of ever giving a return.
Morale (and I have to keep telling this to myself, because it is obviosuly quite counter to my nature): F**k the "investment"! I played because I had fun playing! The playing was the reward!
Most western democracies have the governing power divided into three: the legislative power, the judicial power, and the executive power. This division is considered a good thing, since it prevents any part from gaining unconditional power, and we know that power corrupts.
/RS
Some people just can't stop trying to grap power.
Take the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules. The only purpose of these rules are to prevent people from breaking the copyright law. That is, it is the legislative power's attempt to act as executive power. Not surprisingly, the DMCA can be misused in innumerable ways.
Now consider Hardware Rights Control. Again it is an attempt by someone, this time entirely outside of the government, to grab executive power. The reason for using hardware is to prevent people from breaking the copyright law. Any other feature of DRM can be programmed in software as long as people are cooperative, so hardware is only needed *against* the users who are uncooperative (e.g., those who want to make use of their fair use rights). I will be surprised if there are not innumerable abuses of hardware DRM.
The unholy marriage of DMCA and DRM should remove the need for hardware DRM. After all, is the purpose of the DMCA not to prevent people from circumventing protections, so the digital rights are safe, right? But the legislative power of DMCA is not enough for the people who want to protect "content" from the users. They want another layer of protection to make it even harder to break the law.
When hardware DRM also fails, what will their next step be? My guess is surveilance of all media-capable devices (mandatory ofcourse).
Does that sound far fetched? they already did it!
Funny, actually. I usually hear it as: /RS - European
Many Americans are more concerned by depictions of naked people or sex than by violence.
The Opera browser has, as many have said, had Multi Document Interface since... long ago (I didn't have version before 3.6 ready for checking :). There is, however, a difference between MDI and so-called "tabbed browsing".
MDI supports non-maximized windows inside the MDI frame. Tabbed browsing only supports switching between entire documents, so you cannot chose to have more than one window visible at the same time.
While I rarely use the MDI of Opera for anything except maximized windows, it does show its strength when handling windows opened dynamically by java-/ecma-script on the page, and with sizes not matching the browser's display area. All such windows are still subsumed by the MDI interface, whereas a tabbed interface would have to open windows outside of the tabbed area.
Must agree. I always set my Opera to identify as Opera. I switch whenever a site tells me that I should be using MSIE5+++ etc. (first to netscape, then to IE if needed), and I take comfort in knowing that even then, the browser-id still contains the word Opera for those who knows what to look for.
:) The pages works fine anyway (except those using document.all in the javascript, Opera only turns that MSism on while identifying as IE).
:)
Often, I can switch back to identifying as Opera as soon as I have passed the browser-control
I even made my download manager identify as Opera
/RS
I still find the Mozilla gestures less repsonsive and more clunky. That is probably just habit. Also, while Mozilla has tabs (but you have to do something special to open a new page as a tab), Opera has full multi-document-interface (which is fancy-pancy for having windows, which looks like tabs when they are all maximized, but they don't have to be). Missing the left-right and right-left clicking is a show-stopper though. It's like getting your first hard drive after using floppys for years. You can't remember how you got by without it. Opera is not flawless, but hell, what is. It still sparkles like a gem compared to most of everything else.
Me, addicted? I can stop at any time.
/RS
I tried to return a Win2K to the shop after having second thoughts. It was an academic license and I wasn't technically a student any more, so I failed to meet the requirements. The shop ofcourse refused to have it back (it was open, how else could I read the requirements), but in the end they gave me 90% of the price back. I complained to the local Microsoft office and they basically admitted that they had no way to force the shops to accept their "return to shop" policy even if it is printed on the box.
They did give me a free WinXP Pro instead, so I'll live.
/RS
It's called razor (http://razor.sourceforge.net/index.html)
/RS
The interesting feature of DNA computing is that it is massively parallel, maybe potentially much more than anything we have build electronically so far. Also, it is not restricted to a specific clock cycle, which makes it hard to define the "computing power" of a bowl of strands. Still, they are not equivalent in power to Nondeterministic Turing Machines in general, so DNA computers will not necessarily be the end of all NP-complete problems. Probbly only those of a limited size.
:).
Any instance of a NP complete problem can be solved by a deterministic computer in a fixed time. Often, throwing more computers at the problem lowers the time linearly, so for that specific problem, the time can be as low as wanted. It is just that the number of computers you have to throw at the problem grows very fast as the problem size grows. What they have shown here is that DNA computing works at somewhat large problems, but 2^20 could be bruteforced just as easily.
Now, you calim that Quantum Computing can solve ALL NP-complete problems. That is not known. The group of problems that are polynomially quantum-commputable are a subset of the NP problems which is not known to include any NP-complete problem.
(We don't know that it doesn't, since that would mean that we knew that PNP, and we would have heard that
Factoring can be performed effectively by a qunatum computer, but is not NP complete.
(It is in NP intersect coNP, incidentally).
/RS
> Paying out 300$ a month I could have dropped into
> a savings account and easily replaced my car and
> paid my medical bills if I'd had an accident.
In my country, car insurenance is mandatory not because it pays for you (that part is optional) but because it pays for whoever you run into. Makes sense to me.
/RS