Because the Thai royals cannot respond to attacks, and take legal action or comment at any defamatory comments about them, the crime of lese majesty was inserted into the country's constitution, as a safeguard against political attacks on the royals.
The king doesn't have to respond to attacks, he can just have someone loyal to him respond to the attacks. The law never needed to be in the constitution.
(However, having said that, I can understand how the drafters of their constitution might have thought it might be.)
The article seems to be counting whole e-mails, but what about bytes? And what percent of global IP traffic is E-mail? I'm just wanting to get a feel for how much spam is clogging the backbones and not just how much it is clogging the mailservers.
Did you miss the part where he said "There's no question that when convenient, religion would like to go along with logic and reason."?
My apologies, somehow I missed that part. (I blame sleep lack of sleep at the time of my post.)
religion requires at least some non-rational beliefs
If by "non-rational" you mean counter to reason (i.e. irrational), I would still disagree, but if you mean consistent but not fully justified by reason then I might be inclined to agree. But the later statement is not very surprising since many things in life are by that definition also non-rational (e.g. the belief that oneself is sane or that deductive reasoning is valid).
If you want to work on real languages that are still cutting edge (e.g. Chapel, Fortress, X10, F#, Google's JavaScript implementation), get a Ph.D. in programming languages then get hired by a company that wants make a new language, improve an old language, etc. I personally know that Google, IBM and Microsoft have hired people trained in programming languages to help work on their cutting edge languages. On the other hand if you just want to help implement the next version of Visual C++, this would be a bad strategy.
I am a Ph.D. student in programming languages. Here is the advice that was given to me and it worked out very well.
Go to your local university's library and pull out the journals and proceedings of the conferences that are on the topics you are interested in. Lookup who is writing in those conferences and where they are. Pay particular attention to who is on the program committees/editorial boards and where they are from since those are likely the leaders in the field. For example, the two foremost conferences in my subfield of programming languages are the International Conference on Functional Programing (ICFP) and the Principals of Programing Languages (POPL) conferences and the foremost journal would be the Journal of Functional Programing. Also look at any conferences or workshops run by ACM SIGPLAN since that is the part of ACM in charge of programing languages topics.
Also go to your local university's computer science department and ask around for the professor that is the "programming languages guy". Ask him or her what universities are strong in that area.
Finally take the published university rankings with a grain of salt. Most of those are for undergraduate which doesn't pay as much attention to research (the main thing you want in a Ph.D. program) and at best they are ranking general computer science, not programming languages. Don't be surprised if some no-name state school happens to be at the top in a particular subfield.
You joke, but it actually sounds very plausible. You should suggest this idea to the researchers.
Of course the major impact of this article has nothing to do with games so much as that it is overthrowing the prevailing scientific belief that you can't improve your contrast perception. Whether a side-scroller experiment is scientifically interesting likely also depends on what work has already been done on improving peripheral vision. But it doesn't hurt to ask.
But when I look out into the room or the real world, there is a kind of shock and discomfort until I get adjusted again.
That happens to me after reading a book for a while. If I look up after a few hours of reading, the world looks very blurry. I've never good explanation why (other than wild conjecture).
Also, does anyone have any idea why contrast sensitivity would be a particularly important thing to improve?
Among other things contrast is an essential part of edge detection which in turn is a key part of how we see shapes. Better contract detection helps with seeing in low light conditions or where the subject is visually obscured. It wouldn't help so much when the subject is just optically smaller (e.g. physically farther away).
I'm no expert but I suspect a lot of our visual system is based on contrast because there are so many variables that would really mess with the absolute colors. For example, varying lighting or the changes in pupil dilation and retinal sensitivity that happen automatically.
You beliefs are not supported by the facts. Read up on how omnipotence was treated by Catholic theologians. This is a very clear case there logic shaped doctrine/faith. (Hint: Because of logic, the Catholic doctrine of omnipotence does not say that God can do anything.)
I want to see the actual resolution. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on what exactly the resolution said.
If it is trying to outlaw legitimate criticism, that would obviously be bad. On the other hand maybe the news source is blowing this out of proportion and the resolution merely points out that certain generalizations about groups are harmful to free and open discussion.
unfairly ticketed ? if there's a picture as proof I'd say it's fair you get a ticket..
Read the summary. The camera's were rigged to give out bogus tickets. A common trick was to set the yellow-light time so short that it is physically impossible to safely stop in time.
Assuming a driver slams the breaks and the car decelerates at 3/4 G, it takes a car traveling at 35MPH a full 4.2 seconds to stop and that doesn't even count driver reaction time. There have been many cases where cities would set their yellow-light times as low as 3 seconds. (IIRC the legal minimum is 5 seconds.)
Any way you cut it, traffic cameras were being used by cities to abuse their citizens. Some sort of reform was needed. (Though perhaps regulation would have been better than completely banning them.)
First, what language you focus on depends on what language you will use most in your work. Which depends on what field of programming you focus on. If you work for Microsoft, expect Visual C++ or C#. If you work in an IT department expect PL/SQL or Java. If you work as a Sys Admin expect C, Shell and Perl. And so on...
Second, you really shouldn't learn focus on one language and expect to get by with that because languages come and go. If you work on a team and your boss says you're working in Python, then you will have to learn Python. The next time it could be Java Script or something else. Thus it is much better to get good at learning new languages quickly. That way it doesn't matter what language your boss throws at you.
To develop this still you need three things:
Learn lots of languages. Practice makes perfect. You'll also start to notice patterns that make learning new languages easier (e.g. C++ and Java share many concepts and syntaxes).
Learn languages from lots of paradigms/families. You should try to cover as many as possible because it is much easier to learn a new language in a paradigm/family you already know. Examples include: low-level (C/C++), procedural (most languages), object-oriented (C++/Java), functional (Scheme/ML/Haskell), dynamically typed (Scheme/Python), scripting (Perl/Python/Ruby), declarative (Prolog/SQL), shell (Bash/TCSH).
Just as a literary expert can see past the words on the page to the structure of the story behind the words, you should learn to see past the individual language to the structure of the program behind the code. Being fluent in the language you are using is a prerequisite for that, but it is merely a means. The goal is working with the program.
To give you a sense of perspective there are probably about a dozen languages that I know cold (I use these on a day to day basis) and another few dozen that I know well enough to read but might need a refresher in order to write. For most languages that I don't know, it may take between 2 hours and 2 days to get good at them, but I would still consider taking between 2 days and 2 weeks reasonable.
From reading the rest of the thread. The paper's definition of "free will" amounts to non-determinism. This means it has nothing to do with philosophical free will.
However, it is still interesting because it is an alternate way of proving the impossibility of a deterministic hidden-variable theorem that could explain quantum mechanics. Roughly they prove that if humans have some (possibly non-quantum) way of producing non-deterministic results, then electrons must also be able to produce (quantum) non-deterministic results.
In practical applications the concept of "free will" can be much more concretely defined as the ability to choose one course of action over another.
You'll be happy to know that that definition of free will is still being taught in philosophical/theological circles. Just because some philosophers have redefined free will into a meaningless concept, doesn't mean they all have.
Yes, it is, because I could also choose to not drop it. It would be a hard choice but it would still be a choice.
Free will isn't choice in the absence of reason. That would be randomness. It is the choice between conflicting reasons.
Now you might still claim that free will doesn't exist but at least give the opposition the courtesy of stating their position properly instead of putting up a straw-man.
I am intrigued by your ideas. Could you explain them for the non-network-admins like me in the crowd? (I'm familiar with how the TCP/IP stack works, but have never dealt with shaping and have no idea what HTB stands for.)
Rasterizer: for (i in polygons):
for (j in raster positions):
if (ray from j hits i):
draw pixel at j
Ray-tracer: for (j in raster positions):
for (i in polygons):
if (ray from j hits i):
draw pixel at j
Of course this is a huge simplification. Both rasterizers and ray-tracers optimize their inner loops, the former using math so only pixels that are actually hit will be visited and the later using data structures that quickly find objects that are hit by a ray. However, my understanding is that neither does much optimization of the outer loop and thus you get differing performance characteristics between the two when you increase screen resolution versus increasing number of polygons.
(Yes, I am ignoring ray-traces with multiple bounces. I would be interested to see if the correspondence still remains at that level.)
The purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of information/data. Simply collecting existing information doesn't fall under the traditional purposes of copyright even if that collecting is otherwise valuable to society.
Slashdot Mirror
Because the Thai royals cannot respond to attacks, and take legal action or comment at any defamatory comments about them, the crime of lese majesty was inserted into the country's constitution, as a safeguard against political attacks on the royals.
The king doesn't have to respond to attacks, he can just have someone loyal to him respond to the attacks. The law never needed to be in the constitution.
(However, having said that, I can understand how the drafters of their constitution might have thought it might be.)
I've never understood why smelling of elderberries was a bad thing. Anyone care to explain why that would be an insult? (Off-topic I know.)
The article seems to be counting whole e-mails, but what about bytes? And what percent of global IP traffic is E-mail? I'm just wanting to get a feel for how much spam is clogging the backbones and not just how much it is clogging the mailservers.
Did you miss the part where he said "There's no question that when convenient, religion would like to go along with logic and reason."?
My apologies, somehow I missed that part. (I blame sleep lack of sleep at the time of my post.)
religion requires at least some non-rational beliefs
If by "non-rational" you mean counter to reason (i.e. irrational), I would still disagree, but if you mean consistent but not fully justified by reason then I might be inclined to agree. But the later statement is not very surprising since many things in life are by that definition also non-rational (e.g. the belief that oneself is sane or that deductive reasoning is valid).
If you want to work on real languages that are still cutting edge (e.g. Chapel, Fortress, X10, F#, Google's JavaScript implementation), get a Ph.D. in programming languages then get hired by a company that wants make a new language, improve an old language, etc. I personally know that Google, IBM and Microsoft have hired people trained in programming languages to help work on their cutting edge languages. On the other hand if you just want to help implement the next version of Visual C++, this would be a bad strategy.
I am a Ph.D. student in programming languages. Here is the advice that was given to me and it worked out very well.
Go to your local university's library and pull out the journals and proceedings of the conferences that are on the topics you are interested in. Lookup who is writing in those conferences and where they are. Pay particular attention to who is on the program committees/editorial boards and where they are from since those are likely the leaders in the field. For example, the two foremost conferences in my subfield of programming languages are the International Conference on Functional Programing (ICFP) and the Principals of Programing Languages (POPL) conferences and the foremost journal would be the Journal of Functional Programing. Also look at any conferences or workshops run by ACM SIGPLAN since that is the part of ACM in charge of programing languages topics.
Also go to your local university's computer science department and ask around for the professor that is the "programming languages guy". Ask him or her what universities are strong in that area.
Finally take the published university rankings with a grain of salt. Most of those are for undergraduate which doesn't pay as much attention to research (the main thing you want in a Ph.D. program) and at best they are ranking general computer science, not programming languages. Don't be surprised if some no-name state school happens to be at the top in a particular subfield.
You joke, but it actually sounds very plausible. You should suggest this idea to the researchers.
Of course the major impact of this article has nothing to do with games so much as that it is overthrowing the prevailing scientific belief that you can't improve your contrast perception. Whether a side-scroller experiment is scientifically interesting likely also depends on what work has already been done on improving peripheral vision. But it doesn't hurt to ask.
But when I look out into the room or the real world, there is a kind of shock and discomfort until I get adjusted again.
That happens to me after reading a book for a while. If I look up after a few hours of reading, the world looks very blurry. I've never good explanation why (other than wild conjecture).
Also, does anyone have any idea why contrast sensitivity would be a particularly important thing to improve?
Among other things contrast is an essential part of edge detection which in turn is a key part of how we see shapes. Better contract detection helps with seeing in low light conditions or where the subject is visually obscured. It wouldn't help so much when the subject is just optically smaller (e.g. physically farther away).
I'm no expert but I suspect a lot of our visual system is based on contrast because there are so many variables that would really mess with the absolute colors. For example, varying lighting or the changes in pupil dilation and retinal sensitivity that happen automatically.
MOD PARENT UP.
The UN isn't an enforcing body. It is a diplomatic forum for discussion.
You beliefs are not supported by the facts. Read up on how omnipotence was treated by Catholic theologians. This is a very clear case there logic shaped doctrine/faith. (Hint: Because of logic, the Catholic doctrine of omnipotence does not say that God can do anything.)
I want to see the actual resolution. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on what exactly the resolution said.
If it is trying to outlaw legitimate criticism, that would obviously be bad. On the other hand maybe the news source is blowing this out of proportion and the resolution merely points out that certain generalizations about groups are harmful to free and open discussion.
It all depends on the exact wording.
Just putting it in RAM is considered fixing it in a medium.
unfairly ticketed ? if there's a picture as proof I'd say it's fair you get a ticket..
Read the summary. The camera's were rigged to give out bogus tickets. A common trick was to set the yellow-light time so short that it is physically impossible to safely stop in time.
Assuming a driver slams the breaks and the car decelerates at 3/4 G, it takes a car traveling at 35MPH a full 4.2 seconds to stop and that doesn't even count driver reaction time. There have been many cases where cities would set their yellow-light times as low as 3 seconds. (IIRC the legal minimum is 5 seconds.)
Any way you cut it, traffic cameras were being used by cities to abuse their citizens. Some sort of reform was needed. (Though perhaps regulation would have been better than completely banning them.)
But to retain safe harbor protections he will have to take the message down until there is a resolution.
This doesn't look like a properly formed DMCA take-down. Thus he would not need to take the message down to retain safe harbor.
The god explanation is such a cop out.
Like a "Deus Ex Machina"?
*ducks*
First, what language you focus on depends on what language you will use most in your work. Which depends on what field of programming you focus on. If you work for Microsoft, expect Visual C++ or C#. If you work in an IT department expect PL/SQL or Java. If you work as a Sys Admin expect C, Shell and Perl. And so on...
Second, you really shouldn't learn focus on one language and expect to get by with that because languages come and go. If you work on a team and your boss says you're working in Python, then you will have to learn Python. The next time it could be Java Script or something else. Thus it is much better to get good at learning new languages quickly. That way it doesn't matter what language your boss throws at you.
To develop this still you need three things:
To give you a sense of perspective there are probably about a dozen languages that I know cold (I use these on a day to day basis) and another few dozen that I know well enough to read but might need a refresher in order to write. For most languages that I don't know, it may take between 2 hours and 2 days to get good at them, but I would still consider taking between 2 days and 2 weeks reasonable.
From reading the rest of the thread. The paper's definition of "free will" amounts to non-determinism. This means it has nothing to do with philosophical free will.
However, it is still interesting because it is an alternate way of proving the impossibility of a deterministic hidden-variable theorem that could explain quantum mechanics. Roughly they prove that if humans have some (possibly non-quantum) way of producing non-deterministic results, then electrons must also be able to produce (quantum) non-deterministic results.
Randomness may be insanity, but not all insanity is random.
In practical applications the concept of "free will" can be much more concretely defined as the ability to choose one course of action over another.
You'll be happy to know that that definition of free will is still being taught in philosophical/theological circles. Just because some philosophers have redefined free will into a meaningless concept, doesn't mean they all have.
Dropping a hot potato isn't called "free will"
Yes, it is, because I could also choose to not drop it. It would be a hard choice but it would still be a choice.
Free will isn't choice in the absence of reason. That would be randomness. It is the choice between conflicting reasons.
Now you might still claim that free will doesn't exist but at least give the opposition the courtesy of stating their position properly instead of putting up a straw-man.
Let government come to you
Unless you're on welfare ... or need a driver's license ... or want to report your car being stolen ... etc.
I am intrigued by your ideas. Could you explain them for the non-network-admins like me in the crowd? (I'm familiar with how the TCP/IP stack works, but have never dealt with shaping and have no idea what HTB stands for.)
The basic difference in pseudo code:
for (i in polygons):
for (j in raster positions):
if (ray from j hits i):
draw pixel at j
for (j in raster positions):
for (i in polygons):
if (ray from j hits i):
draw pixel at j
Of course this is a huge simplification. Both rasterizers and ray-tracers optimize their inner loops, the former using math so only pixels that are actually hit will be visited and the later using data structures that quickly find objects that are hit by a ray. However, my understanding is that neither does much optimization of the outer loop and thus you get differing performance characteristics between the two when you increase screen resolution versus increasing number of polygons.
(Yes, I am ignoring ray-traces with multiple bounces. I would be interested to see if the correspondence still remains at that level.)
The purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of information/data. Simply collecting existing information doesn't fall under the traditional purposes of copyright even if that collecting is otherwise valuable to society.