Zero-day music is pirated music that is available on the internet before it actually hits the shelves. I've been told that this is leaked out of the recording studio itself. If that's the case, then isn't copy protecting the CD pointless? I'm sure the majority of music available on the internet is originally from zero-day music. The music is still available illegally, and they inconvenience all the legit music buyers, the ones who "casually" rip so they can "casually" put them on their portable player to listen to whereever they go. It just seems so asinine.
I have a friend that got sucked into the Everquest addiction. He stopped going to school, and just played it all day. He kept staying up later and later getting more out of phase with the rest of the world that finally it looped back around and he started going to bed at the regular time again. He wound up selling his ebay character and some magic boots on Ebay for about $1000, but he blew a sememster at school, -$3000.
The particle physicists' ultimate goal is "grand unification" - recovering the primordial symmetry in the form of a single law - a few concise equations, it is often said, that could be silk-screened onto a T- shirt.
the schools could alternatively get open-source software--for free
Who would maintain the 14,000 school networks if they decided to use open source. In the article it says that MS will train people to maintain their systems in the schools.
Seriously this is a good thing that computers and software are going to schools. Do you really believe those schools were on the verge of booting up a network of linux machines before big bad MS trounced them all and installed Windows? I highly doubt it. More than likely 14,000 schools will get computers and software that didn't have them before. And moreover, this isn't stifling any open-source movements. There's still plenty of schools out there.
I don't like MS. They're a monopoly and they need broken up. If the government doesn't act, then they'll keep throwing in "features" til they own your computer, internet, email, music, and basically anything else electronic. Yeah, this isn't a good punishment for MS. But even if this case didn't result in MS being broken up, don't knock the fact that children are being helped.
If 1V is high, and 0V is low, then the third state does not have to be 0.5V. Why can't it be -1V? This is balanced ternary notation from the article. So now you just check for polarity or ground. And this could be acomplished with transistors too, similar to how CSOM logic is done. You would just have the transisters connect the output to either plus, ground, or minus. It may not be the fastest thing in the world, but neither was binary computing at its infancy.
And yes, one has to be mindful of noise margins. With a bigger range (-1 to +1 instead of 0 to +1), the percentage noise margin has to be smaller, but that's certainly no reason to not try it out. To eek out every last drop of performance, engineers have been shrinking noise margins for many, many years. Think of GHz computers. Transistors have to switch faster than a nanosecond. Some engineers spend there whole careers making sure that clocks are accurate at times less than a nanosecond. That's where performance comes from, pushing hardware to its limits, and then beyond.
Probably ternary computing won't happen, but it's more because so much has been invested in binary computers, rather than binary is better. Binary is the standard, not necessarily the most efficient. The most common is not always the best (think M$).
Also, conceptually ternary computing is already done in binary machines. In adders it's a lot of times easier to deal with -1,0,+1 rather than just 0,1. So they use three states and encode them in a 2-bit number (-1=01, 0=00, +1=11). In fact, this is so much more efficient that it outweighs the fact that one of the states is wasted (10). This technique is also done in A to D converters.
Digit may have come from di- which means two, but digital does not mean two states; it means discrete. A digital clock has more than two states, it has a state for every second of the day. Time on an analog clock continuously flows from second to second, but in digital it jumps discretely. In fact an "analog" clock where the second hand ticks from second to second is technically a digital clock; it does not represent the times between each second.
So actually, a computer designed with ternary logic would still be a digital computer. And it's trits would be digits (discrete values).
Go to Junkbusters. It will tell you how to never get junk again.
I actually signed up for it because of junk mail. I would get up to an inch thick of junk mail each week, and now I don't get anything. The site tells you how to be removed from the lists that companies pass around. If you follow the right proceedures, it's actually illegal for them to mail you
The same is true for telemarketing lists too. It's a great site, and it works.
Komi
Re:That's the hard way of solving the RB
on
When Lego Meet Rubik
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Given the time energy and persistence most people will put into the cube, this is no different than the real cube.
Actually it's almost more clever than solving the cube itself. I know several people (including myself) who can solve a Rubik's Cube, but all of them (including myself) learned how to solve it by reading the solution out of a book, or off the web. But since this was something new, it took real ingenuity to figure it out.
Hofstadter (in Metamagical Themas) points out how damn clever the internal mechanism is
You should see the 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 cubes. The 5x5 has a similar mechanism to the 3x3 because it has a central square on each side. But it has to hold in more edge pieces and eight middle pieces surrounding the center square.
The 4x4x4 is a totally different mechanism, since it has no middle square. It's core is a ball with grooves in it, and all the pieces can slide around on it. (Note: Don't try to picture it based on my description. You'd have to open one up to really find out.)
And in response to your parent post, trying to solve a cube that's put together wrong takes about as much time to figure out as it does to solve it. Once you're putting the final pieces in place you notice that one piece is rotated in a way it shouldn't be. Then you know immediately it's impossible.
Komi
Re:We need more court cases like this.
on
eBay Beats DMCA
·
· Score: 1
Lawyers are pure evil
But remember, for every slimey lawyer there's a slimey plaintiff. The lawyers are just responding to the demand of the American public.
If people want to illegally trade music, do we (rather, should we) blame Napster who merely provides a means to do this? So should we blame lawyers when they're just responding to a demand of a greedy sue-happy American?
This isn't the Land of Moral Integrity, it's the Land of the Dollar. If there's a buck to be made, then the demand will be met. I'm not neccessarily happy with this system, but it's the one we got.
Speaking of parodies: I always thought Reeses should do a comercial "How a cocain addict eats a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup." And then he chops it up real small and snorts it in with a straw.
That would have been priceless...
Komi
Any model that explains how we got here is a valid theory; the ket difference between those models though is how much evidence there is for it. The big bang has considerably more evidence than creationism.
That's what makes it more suited for school. Though I must admit that it shouldn't be taught as fact, but as just a theory (much as Gravity is still only a theory), and that there are other possible models, like creationism.
I thought Einstein created the cosmological constant to counter the idea that the universe was expanding. He couldn't believe that the universe wasn't stable so he created a constant that would hold everything in place. Later he said that the CC was the worst mistake he ever made. Of course I suppose it might have crept back into scientific theory in some other for.
Slashdot Mirror
komi
komi
I know I'd buy one ;)
komi
Who would maintain the 14,000 school networks if they decided to use open source. In the article it says that MS will train people to maintain their systems in the schools.
Seriously this is a good thing that computers and software are going to schools. Do you really believe those schools were on the verge of booting up a network of linux machines before big bad MS trounced them all and installed Windows? I highly doubt it. More than likely 14,000 schools will get computers and software that didn't have them before. And moreover, this isn't stifling any open-source movements. There's still plenty of schools out there.
I don't like MS. They're a monopoly and they need broken up. If the government doesn't act, then they'll keep throwing in "features" til they own your computer, internet, email, music, and basically anything else electronic. Yeah, this isn't a good punishment for MS. But even if this case didn't result in MS being broken up, don't knock the fact that children are being helped.
komi
If 1V is high, and 0V is low, then the third state does not have to be 0.5V. Why can't it be -1V? This is balanced ternary notation from the article. So now you just check for polarity or ground. And this could be acomplished with transistors too, similar to how CSOM logic is done. You would just have the transisters connect the output to either plus, ground, or minus. It may not be the fastest thing in the world, but neither was binary computing at its infancy.
And yes, one has to be mindful of noise margins. With a bigger range (-1 to +1 instead of 0 to +1), the percentage noise margin has to be smaller, but that's certainly no reason to not try it out. To eek out every last drop of performance, engineers have been shrinking noise margins for many, many years. Think of GHz computers. Transistors have to switch faster than a nanosecond. Some engineers spend there whole careers making sure that clocks are accurate at times less than a nanosecond. That's where performance comes from, pushing hardware to its limits, and then beyond.
Probably ternary computing won't happen, but it's more because so much has been invested in binary computers, rather than binary is better. Binary is the standard, not necessarily the most efficient. The most common is not always the best (think M$).
Also, conceptually ternary computing is already done in binary machines. In adders it's a lot of times easier to deal with -1,0,+1 rather than just 0,1. So they use three states and encode them in a 2-bit number (-1=01, 0=00, +1=11). In fact, this is so much more efficient that it outweighs the fact that one of the states is wasted (10). This technique is also done in A to D converters.
komi
So actually, a computer designed with ternary logic would still be a digital computer. And it's trits would be digits (discrete values).
komi
I actually signed up for it because of junk mail. I would get up to an inch thick of junk mail each week, and now I don't get anything. The site tells you how to be removed from the lists that companies pass around. If you follow the right proceedures, it's actually illegal for them to mail you
The same is true for telemarketing lists too. It's a great site, and it works.
Komi
Given the time energy and persistence most people will put into the cube, this is no different than the real cube.
Actually it's almost more clever than solving the cube itself. I know several people (including myself) who can solve a Rubik's Cube, but all of them (including myself) learned how to solve it by reading the solution out of a book, or off the web. But since this was something new, it took real ingenuity to figure it out.
Hofstadter (in Metamagical Themas) points out how damn clever the internal mechanism is
You should see the 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 cubes. The 5x5 has a similar mechanism to the 3x3 because it has a central square on each side. But it has to hold in more edge pieces and eight middle pieces surrounding the center square.
The 4x4x4 is a totally different mechanism, since it has no middle square. It's core is a ball with grooves in it, and all the pieces can slide around on it. (Note: Don't try to picture it based on my description. You'd have to open one up to really find out.)
And in response to your parent post, trying to solve a cube that's put together wrong takes about as much time to figure out as it does to solve it. Once you're putting the final pieces in place you notice that one piece is rotated in a way it shouldn't be. Then you know immediately it's impossible.
Komi
But remember, for every slimey lawyer there's a slimey plaintiff. The lawyers are just responding to the demand of the American public.
If people want to illegally trade music, do we (rather, should we) blame Napster who merely provides a means to do this? So should we blame lawyers when they're just responding to a demand of a greedy sue-happy American?
This isn't the Land of Moral Integrity, it's the Land of the Dollar. If there's a buck to be made, then the demand will be met. I'm not neccessarily happy with this system, but it's the one we got.
My two cents. Thanks for listening.
Komi
Speaking of parodies: I always thought Reeses should do a comercial "How a cocain addict eats a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup." And then he chops it up real small and snorts it in with a straw. That would have been priceless... Komi
Any model that explains how we got here is a valid theory; the ket difference between those models though is how much evidence there is for it. The big bang has considerably more evidence than creationism. That's what makes it more suited for school. Though I must admit that it shouldn't be taught as fact, but as just a theory (much as Gravity is still only a theory), and that there are other possible models, like creationism.
I thought Einstein created the cosmological constant to counter the idea that the universe was expanding. He couldn't believe that the universe wasn't stable so he created a constant that would hold everything in place. Later he said that the CC was the worst mistake he ever made. Of course I suppose it might have crept back into scientific theory in some other for.
Komi