I remember hearing somewhere that plants produce caffeine as a natural pesticide. Without caffeine, does this mean that more artificial pesticide will have to be used on the coffee plants? Any idea what environmental effect this might have?
I can't comment about the Egyptians enslaving the Jews, but so far you've been wrong about everything else you wrote about, so it wouldn't surprise me to find that this is historical fact as well.
I see this logic goes both ways now. The bible is correct about *some* things, so therefore it must be correct about *all* things! The poster is incorrect about *some* things, so therefore he must be incorrect about *all* things!
This is such an elementary logical fallacy that I can't believe it's used in any way other than a joke.
Not "invalid" as much as "unfalsifiable." An unfalsifiable theory *might* be true, but is basically useless as a theory, as you'll never be able to test it, and as you said, you'll never be able to prove it either way "unless the government admits it is true." But even then, how do you know they're telling the truth? You'll really never know one way or the other, and will end up believing whatever you want with no knowledge of how connected it really is to the truth.
Another reason it's important that a theory be falsifiable is it's really hard to prove that a theory is true -- it's much easier to find a counterexample and show that it's false. All scientific theories have some testable, falsifiable aspect to them. Conspiracy theories do not.
Please, why can't people on slashdot realize that not everyone in the world has read the books? Is putting a tiny bit of spoiler space really that hard?
I just can't get away from this. It's completely awful. First there was learning about gandalf before seeing the 2nd movie, and now learning about aragorn, gimli, and legolas's fates in (i'm assuming) the 3rd book/movie. What the hell people!!
There's a difference between the FP bugs in the early pentiums, and normal rounding error due to the binary representation of fractional parts in the IEEE floating point format.
Most circuit engineers out in the real world, even the low-level CMOS types, just draw pictures. The process of turning those pictures into the actual thing is either done completely automatically, or by lower level lab techs.
Sorta like the pyramids. Those who designed them didn't go dragging stone slabs around! (Not saying that IC lab techs are slaves or unskilled or... uh oh. I hope I don't get flamed by any:O )
You're pretty much right. Designing a basic CPU really isn't as big a deal as anyone who hasn't done it thinks it is. I did a basic microcoded CPU based on a PDP-like instruction set as my senior design project, and I pretty much designed it from scratch. Implemented it in an FPGA.
I was TA'ing a course this sememster where we help sophomores build a basic MIPS like computer in a Spice-derived language. Several years ago, they actually built the computers out of discreet TTL components.
Bussing your CPU with a self-designed video controller, and writing operating system software and such for it does go beyond the basic undergrad computer engineering experience, however:)
And the definition of "insightful" reaches an all new low on slashdot!
Re:windows vs *nix - un-informed is un-informed
on
Yet Another Windows Worm
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
In contrast, right now my XP laptop is running login.scr as SYSTEM. Yup, a screen saver with system level privs.
What's your point? The login screen saver logs users in, so it makes sense that it has some sort of advanced privileges. (Maybe it doesn't need all of SYSTEM, true...)
And the screen saver is well protected in winnt, believe it or not. It runs in a separate secure desktop, just like the ctrl-alt-del desktop does.
Now I agree that the security architecture of windows has flaws, but c'mon, there's got to be a better example than login.scr...
Considering that quake is one of the most popular game benchmarks of the last few years, I'd say ATI's "optimizations" are just about on the same level as nVidia's, with or without any "tenuous justification." nVidia's are just more blatant -- that doesn't mean that ATI's are any better.
Anyway, History repeats itself. Rewind a decade or so and look at contreversy about vendor compiler "optimizations" that were made for specific CPU benchmark suites. Some of these optimizations would actually compile other code incorrectly. I think, maybe, multimedia benchmarks should start doing what SPEC did and have two sets -- base and peak. Base is strict, laid out just as the suite programmer wants it. Peak allows as much specialized optimization as the vendor would like. Everyone is happy, no one has to cheat.
That's odd.. When outlook Express crashes, and you start it up again, it specifically does *not* display the last email, in case that email caused the crash. It even displays a message to that effect.
Does outlook express have this feature and outlook 2000 not? That kinda sucks, considering outlook 2000 is considered the more mature/higher level product.
Also, tiny variations in the (ideally uniform) spacing of the digital data on the disk -- called "jitter" -- can cause tiny amounts of distortion when sent through a lower-quality DAC. Some claim they can hear distortions caused by jitter. Also, supposedly CDR's are more susceptible to jitter than pressed CDs (and higher burning speeds more susceptible than lower speeds -- audiophiles always prefer burning at 1x to minimize it).
Minor jitter doesn't affect digital to digital transfers, of course, unless the jitter is so bad that the transfer is no longer synchronized. Then you get the wonderful clicks and pops.
Good point but... Aiiiieeee now my brain's in a knot.
I think we need to send lawmakers back go grammar class, because it seems to me that "those devices" is ambiguous. Gramatically speaking.
It still seems to me that the best interpretation of that clause is this:
- A person shall not assemble, possess, etc etc an unlawful telecommuncations device, or assemble, possess, etc, a (legal?) telecommuncations device, intending to use [either kind of] these devices/allow [either kind of] these devices to be used/or having reason to know that [either kind of] the devices can be used for any of the following:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but your proposed interpretation is this:
- A person shall not assemble, possess, etc etc an unlawful telecommuncations device, or assemble, possess, etc, a (legal?) telecommuncations device intending to use those [unlawful] devices [as components] or allow the [unlawful] devices to be used [as components] or having reason to know that the [unlawful] devices are intended to be used [as components] to do any of the following:
... I see three major problems with the second interpretation. First, how do you build a *legal* telecommunications device out of unlawful components? Second, it seems odd that posession or sale of a legal device is unlawful if you have knowledge that an unlawful device is intended to be used with it for these specific purposes. Thirdly, this wording doesn't actually connect the use or posession or sale etc of the unlawful devices to the list of "things not to do" in the rest of the section. It'd just be saying that you can't use or sell or possess etc the unlawful devices -- which seems redundant because they're already "unlawful."
I did read the section, and the sections it references. Where exactly is this legal definition of "location"? And why is it applicable to "place" as well?
The logic in my sig is assumed to be temporally invariant.
This is the problem with legalese... there's always key terms that they don't seem to bother defining.
If place means "approximate physical location" then NAT'ing your home is fine. But sharing wifi with your neighbors may not be.
If place means "specific computer that originated the data" -- well, then NAT might be in trouble. But come to think of it, doesn't that seem like an odd definition of "place"?
For example, when I use a cell phone, do you say the place of origin of my call is the cell phone, or the actual location i'm in when I make the call?
The problem is -- a good lawyer could argue either way. The law is, at best, AMBIGUOUS. The lawmakers don't specify what their intention was in the clause... they just lay the clause out there and seemingly hope for the best. We don't know what's illegal, until a judge comes along in a big court case and sets some precident. That's a big problem, in my book, sorta like ex-post-facto -- "we'll tell you what's illegal as soon as someone does it."
This clause shouldn't be allowed to stand as it is.
The fact is that this law applies to "unlawful telecommunication devices" NOT "telecommunication access devices". READ THE BILL!!!!
Maybe you should RE-read, before you're so hasty to flame:
A person shall not assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise an unlawful telecommunications access device or assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise a telecommunications device intending to use those devices or to allow the devices to be used to do any of the following or knowing or having reason to know that the devices are intended to be used to do any of the following:
I'm still trying to determine if using a NAT applies under this definition of "telecommuncations device"... and under their definition of "place" when they say "Conceal the existence or place of origin or destination"...
I didn't catch it right away either. Don't you hate legalese?... I'm still trying to determine whether this *really* applies to NATs or not... this stuff is so hard to read:P
But yeah it definately would apply to the manufacturers, too.
That machine fails for reasons that are truly subtle and fantastic.
I heard that the basic problem with this setup was that if the rachet/pawl system was at thermal equilibrium with the propellor system, then for any random thermal perturbation that could cause it to go "the right way," there's a similar amount of random thermal perturbation on the pawl itself that could cause it to go back. So the system, on average, never goes anywhere.
Is this what you were thinking of? Or is there something else?
Well, the thing is, most universities simultaneously teach you Computer science *and* software engineering. The latter definately has practical value. The former... well let's just say that I forgot everything I learned in Models of Computation about 3 days after the final exam.
I personally believe that they should be completely different majors. Are there any colleges out there that make this split?
So TTS with synthesized phonemes sounds bad, and they try to use recorded phonemes instead. Those still sound bad when the computer has to produce a phoneme combination that wasn't recorded.
So what's the next step? Is there anyone working on physical modelling of the acoustic properties of the mouth, tongue, throat, larynx, and lungs as they glide between different phonemes to produce speech sounds? This seems like the only way you're gonna get something closer to natural than this recorded-phoneme technology... but with a lot of processing power.
Of course there's the 2nd problem of inflecting things properly, but that seems to require text recognition technology beyond what we currently have.
For complex displays, such as molecules, cad images, or medical images, having depth perception can *really* help out with understanding the image clearly, even if you can't turn your head and "look around." Basically, instead of your brain needing to *guess* the depth information from the 2d image, it can get almost explicit depth information from the two images these 3d monitors give you.
For those of us who don't look at complex scientific images.... well, yeah, it's also cool:)
Slashdot Mirror
I remember hearing somewhere that plants produce caffeine as a natural pesticide. Without caffeine, does this mean that more artificial pesticide will have to be used on the coffee plants? Any idea what environmental effect this might have?
I can't comment about the Egyptians enslaving the Jews, but so far you've been wrong about everything else you wrote about, so it wouldn't surprise me to find that this is historical fact as well.
I see this logic goes both ways now. The bible is correct about *some* things, so therefore it must be correct about *all* things! The poster is incorrect about *some* things, so therefore he must be incorrect about *all* things!
This is such an elementary logical fallacy that I can't believe it's used in any way other than a joke.
Not "invalid" as much as "unfalsifiable." An unfalsifiable theory *might* be true, but is basically useless as a theory, as you'll never be able to test it, and as you said, you'll never be able to prove it either way "unless the government admits it is true." But even then, how do you know they're telling the truth? You'll really never know one way or the other, and will end up believing whatever you want with no knowledge of how connected it really is to the truth.
Another reason it's important that a theory be falsifiable is it's really hard to prove that a theory is true -- it's much easier to find a counterexample and show that it's false. All scientific theories have some testable, falsifiable aspect to them. Conspiracy theories do not.
Unless, of course, these are appendix things. Then it's not so bad.
but still
Please, why can't people on slashdot realize that not everyone in the world has read the books? Is putting a tiny bit of spoiler space really that hard?
I just can't get away from this. It's completely awful. First there was learning about gandalf before seeing the 2nd movie, and now learning about aragorn, gimli, and legolas's fates in (i'm assuming) the 3rd book/movie. What the hell people!!
There's a difference between the FP bugs in the early pentiums, and normal rounding error due to the binary representation of fractional parts in the IEEE floating point format.
:)
Besides you're redundant as the AC said
Most circuit engineers out in the real world, even the low-level CMOS types, just draw pictures. The process of turning those pictures into the actual thing is either done completely automatically, or by lower level lab techs.
:O )
Sorta like the pyramids. Those who designed them didn't go dragging stone slabs around! (Not saying that IC lab techs are slaves or unskilled or... uh oh. I hope I don't get flamed by any
You're pretty much right. Designing a basic CPU really isn't as big a deal as anyone who hasn't done it thinks it is. I did a basic microcoded CPU based on a PDP-like instruction set as my senior design project, and I pretty much designed it from scratch. Implemented it in an FPGA.
:)
I was TA'ing a course this sememster where we help sophomores build a basic MIPS like computer in a Spice-derived language. Several years ago, they actually built the computers out of discreet TTL components.
Bussing your CPU with a self-designed video controller, and writing operating system software and such for it does go beyond the basic undergrad computer engineering experience, however
And the definition of "insightful" reaches an all new low on slashdot!
In contrast, right now my XP laptop is running login.scr as SYSTEM. Yup, a screen saver with system level privs.
What's your point? The login screen saver logs users in, so it makes sense that it has some sort of advanced privileges. (Maybe it doesn't need all of SYSTEM, true...)
And the screen saver is well protected in winnt, believe it or not. It runs in a separate secure desktop, just like the ctrl-alt-del desktop does.
Now I agree that the security architecture of windows has flaws, but c'mon, there's got to be a better example than login.scr...
Science may require some kind of morality or ethics -- just like everything else does; however, Morality and ethics do not require religion.
Considering that quake is one of the most popular game benchmarks of the last few years, I'd say ATI's "optimizations" are just about on the same level as nVidia's, with or without any "tenuous justification." nVidia's are just more blatant -- that doesn't mean that ATI's are any better.
Anyway, History repeats itself. Rewind a decade or so and look at contreversy about vendor compiler "optimizations" that were made for specific CPU benchmark suites. Some of these optimizations would actually compile other code incorrectly. I think, maybe, multimedia benchmarks should start doing what SPEC did and have two sets -- base and peak. Base is strict, laid out just as the suite programmer wants it. Peak allows as much specialized optimization as the vendor would like. Everyone is happy, no one has to cheat.
That's odd.. When outlook Express crashes, and you start it up again, it specifically does *not* display the last email, in case that email caused the crash. It even displays a message to that effect.
Does outlook express have this feature and outlook 2000 not? That kinda sucks, considering outlook 2000 is considered the more mature/higher level product.
Also, tiny variations in the (ideally uniform) spacing of the digital data on the disk -- called "jitter" -- can cause tiny amounts of distortion when sent through a lower-quality DAC. Some claim they can hear distortions caused by jitter. Also, supposedly CDR's are more susceptible to jitter than pressed CDs (and higher burning speeds more susceptible than lower speeds -- audiophiles always prefer burning at 1x to minimize it).
Minor jitter doesn't affect digital to digital transfers, of course, unless the jitter is so bad that the transfer is no longer synchronized. Then you get the wonderful clicks and pops.
If you could get kazaa users to use some other p2p program that isn't spyware,
You mean kazaa lite?
An xbox version would be easy to port due to the fact that it basically a pc and uses directx
Except that John Carmack uses OpenGL.
Good point but... Aiiiieeee now my brain's in a knot.
... I see three major problems with the second interpretation. First, how do you build a *legal* telecommunications device out of unlawful components? Second, it seems odd that posession or sale of a legal device is unlawful if you have knowledge that an unlawful device is intended to be used with it for these specific purposes. Thirdly, this wording doesn't actually connect the use or posession or sale etc of the unlawful devices to the list of "things not to do" in the rest of the section. It'd just be saying that you can't use or sell or possess etc the unlawful devices -- which seems redundant because they're already "unlawful."
I think we need to send lawmakers back go grammar class, because it seems to me that "those devices" is ambiguous. Gramatically speaking.
It still seems to me that the best interpretation of that clause is this:
- A person shall not assemble, possess, etc etc an unlawful telecommuncations device, or assemble, possess, etc, a (legal?) telecommuncations device, intending to use [either kind of] these devices/allow [either kind of] these devices to be used/or having reason to know that [either kind of] the devices can be used for any of the following:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but your proposed interpretation is this:
- A person shall not assemble, possess, etc etc an unlawful telecommuncations device, or assemble, possess, etc, a (legal?) telecommuncations device intending to use those [unlawful] devices [as components] or allow the [unlawful] devices to be used [as components] or having reason to know that the [unlawful] devices are intended to be used [as components] to do any of the following:
I did read the section, and the sections it references. Where exactly is this legal definition of "location"? And why is it applicable to "place" as well?
The logic in my sig is assumed to be temporally invariant.
Seriously... what do they mean by "place"?
... they just lay the clause out there and seemingly hope for the best. We don't know what's illegal, until a judge comes along in a big court case and sets some precident. That's a big problem, in my book, sorta like ex-post-facto -- "we'll tell you what's illegal as soon as someone does it."
This is the problem with legalese... there's always key terms that they don't seem to bother defining.
If place means "approximate physical location" then NAT'ing your home is fine. But sharing wifi with your neighbors may not be.
If place means "specific computer that originated the data" -- well, then NAT might be in trouble. But come to think of it, doesn't that seem like an odd definition of "place"?
For example, when I use a cell phone, do you say the place of origin of my call is the cell phone, or the actual location i'm in when I make the call?
The problem is -- a good lawyer could argue either way. The law is, at best, AMBIGUOUS. The lawmakers don't specify what their intention was in the clause
This clause shouldn't be allowed to stand as it is.
The fact is that this law applies to "unlawful telecommunication devices" NOT "telecommunication access devices". READ THE BILL!!!!
... and under their definition of "place" when they say "Conceal the existence or place of origin or destination"...
Maybe you should RE-read, before you're so hasty to flame:
A person shall not assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise an unlawful telecommunications access device or assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise a telecommunications device intending to use those devices or to allow the devices to be used to do any of the following or knowing or having reason to know that the devices are intended to be used to do any of the following:
I'm still trying to determine if using a NAT applies under this definition of "telecommuncations device"
One word:
... I'm still trying to determine whether this *really* applies to NATs or not... this stuff is so hard to read :P
possess
I didn't catch it right away either. Don't you hate legalese?
But yeah it definately would apply to the manufacturers, too.
That machine fails for reasons that are truly subtle and fantastic.
I heard that the basic problem with this setup was that if the rachet/pawl system was at thermal equilibrium with the propellor system, then for any random thermal perturbation that could cause it to go "the right way," there's a similar amount of random thermal perturbation on the pawl itself that could cause it to go back. So the system, on average, never goes anywhere.
Is this what you were thinking of? Or is there something else?
Well, the thing is, most universities simultaneously teach you Computer science *and* software engineering. The latter definately has practical value. The former... well let's just say that I forgot everything I learned in Models of Computation about 3 days after the final exam.
I personally believe that they should be completely different majors. Are there any colleges out there that make this split?
So TTS with synthesized phonemes sounds bad, and they try to use recorded phonemes instead. Those still sound bad when the computer has to produce a phoneme combination that wasn't recorded.
... but with a lot of processing power.
So what's the next step? Is there anyone working on physical modelling of the acoustic properties of the mouth, tongue, throat, larynx, and lungs as they glide between different phonemes to produce speech sounds? This seems like the only way you're gonna get something closer to natural than this recorded-phoneme technology
Of course there's the 2nd problem of inflecting things properly, but that seems to require text recognition technology beyond what we currently have.
For complex displays, such as molecules, cad images, or medical images, having depth perception can *really* help out with understanding the image clearly, even if you can't turn your head and "look around." Basically, instead of your brain needing to *guess* the depth information from the 2d image, it can get almost explicit depth information from the two images these 3d monitors give you.
:)
For those of us who don't look at complex scientific images.... well, yeah, it's also cool