id
int64 2
42.1M
| by
large_stringlengths 2
15
⌀ | time
timestamp[us] | title
large_stringlengths 0
198
⌀ | text
large_stringlengths 0
27.4k
⌀ | url
large_stringlengths 0
6.6k
⌀ | score
int64 -1
6.02k
⌀ | descendants
int64 -1
7.29k
⌀ | kids
large list | deleted
large list | dead
bool 1
class | scraping_error
large_stringclasses 25
values | scraped_title
large_stringlengths 1
59.3k
⌀ | scraped_published_at
large_stringlengths 4
66
⌀ | scraped_byline
large_stringlengths 1
757
⌀ | scraped_body
large_stringlengths 1
50k
⌀ | scraped_at
timestamp[us] | scraped_language
large_stringclasses 58
values | split
large_stringclasses 1
value |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
52,280 | jyrzyk | 2007-09-08T20:42:51 | Joshua Schachter: Elevator camera obscura | http://joshua.schachter.org/2007/07/elevator.html | 9 | 1 | [
52334
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,283 | nickb | 2007-09-08T21:08:04 | Databases: Partitioning vs. Federation vs. Sharding | http://www.lethargy.org/~jesus/archives/95-Partitioning-vs.-Federation-vs.-Sharding.html | 9 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,285 | nickb | 2007-09-08T21:12:11 | Lisp and Persistent Data - "relational databases are some kind of sinister death cult" | null | http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/20faf1d2a5a3a97c?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 | 1 | 1 | [
52385
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,287 | nickb | 2007-09-08T21:14:49 | Subversion Merge Tracking: The Basics | http://blogs.open.collab.net/svn/2007/09/what-subversion.html | 12 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,288 | nickb | 2007-09-08T21:16:25 | MySpace: How To Devalue a Platform in Three Easy Steps | null | http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/09/05/MySpaceHowToDevalueAPlatformInThreeEasySteps.aspx | 3 | 2 | [
52453,
52449
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,292 | rokhayakebe | 2007-09-08T21:27:32 | Would you sell your startup to Microsoft? Why? Why not? (I am not sure). | 1 | 3 | [
52778,
52303,
52298
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
||
52,300 | mtw | 2007-09-08T21:46:06 | Entrepreneurs, please help - How do you get an audience and customers? | if you are a web entrepreneur, do you write "Top 10 ways..." posts for reddit or digg, and get friends to vote for them? or youtube videos? or adwords? any tip appreciated. we are about to launch a web application but we all have tech backgrounds and clueless about web marketing. | 1 | 7 | [
52309,
52307,
52313,
52388,
52310
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
52,315 | brett | 2007-09-08T22:52:18 | Disqus Blog >> Geez, when are you guys launching already? | http://blog.disqus.net/2007/09/08/geez-when-are-you-guys-launching-already/ | 8 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,337 | hhm | 2007-09-09T00:07:01 | Why do so few scientists make significant contributions and so many are forgotten in the long run? - "You and Your Research" | http://www.cs.virginia.edu/%7Erobins/YouAndYourResearch.html | 28 | 11 | [
52502,
52409,
52401,
52393,
52514
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,344 | falsestprophet | 2007-09-09T00:30:05 | Ron Paul for America | (Although he would definitely approve of Paul Graham censoring him as an act of private enterprise.) | http://www.ronpaul2008.com/ | 2 | -1 | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,349 | hosting101 | 2007-09-09T00:49:48 | Web Hosting Beginner Guide | http://hosting-101.blogspot.com | 1 | -1 | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,351 | charzom | 2007-09-09T00:53:39 | Research Shows ADHD Increased by Food Additives | http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/health/research/06hyper.html?ex=1346731200&en=dbf718c298c91c04&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss | 8 | 6 | [
52406,
52430,
52504,
52371,
52375
] | null | null | fetch failed | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T05:03:05 | null | train |
|
52,352 | nickb | 2007-09-09T00:54:34 | A Neighborhood of Infinity: Tries and their Derivatives | null | http://sigfpe.blogspot.com/2007/09/tries-and-their-derivatives_08.html | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,356 | nickb | 2007-09-09T00:57:14 | Task-Centered User Interface Design (full ebook) | http://hcibib.org/tcuid/index.html | 15 | 3 | [
52400,
52479,
52690
] | null | null | missing_parsing | Main page and Shareware Notice | null | null |
SHAREWARE NOTICE:
Many thanks to the readers over the years who have expressed their appreciation for this book by sending us a payment, or a fun gift in iieu of paymant, or just a note of appreciation. We are no longer accepting these: please use the book with our blessing.
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
This book is copyright 1993, 1994 by Clayton Lewis and
John Rieman. You are free to make and distribute
copies of the book in electronic or paper form, with
the following restrictions:
(1) Copies must be unchanged from the original.
(2) No part of the book may be sold or
included as part of a package for sale without the
authors' written permission.
We thank you for your support!
| 2024-11-08T17:50:48 | null | train |
|
52,357 | nickb | 2007-09-09T00:57:53 | The Best Synchronization Is No Synchronization | null | http://www.flounder.com/no_synchronization.htm | 6 | 2 | [
52470,
52402
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,363 | andreyf | 2007-09-09T01:17:40 | Paul Graham wishes he hadn't made the comment about Ron Paul | http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52335 | 2 | -1 | [
52366
] | null | true | no_error | You don't seem to grasp that we're talking about a completely orthogonal issue. ... | null | null | No, I think the real problem is that talking about politics brings out the worst in people who disagree with you (because you make them feel angry), and the only the mildly unsavory in people who don't (because you make them feel smug). How many people responded to What You Can't Say with some form of "Yes for thee, but not for me"?Telling people an important part of their opinion-forming mechanism -- their facts, or their fact-finding, or their ability to tell "probative" from "normative" -- is just as special case that gives everyone an equal opportunity to show his ass.I actually spent some time thinking about how you could do better than what's out there now -- provide a way to enforce good rhetorical behavior; set some rules about evidence; and especially, make prominence based on credibility or evidentiary support.But in the end, I don't think many forum users would really prefer the hard work of keeping their opinions in line with all the available facts to the satisfaction of beating a disembodied un-person in a non-argument. And also, there are a lot of factors working against you: http://www.singinst.org/Biases.pdfhttp://overcomingbias.com
| 2024-11-08T07:14:09 | en | train |
|
52,367 | kkim | 2007-09-09T01:26:40 | Dutch building furthest offshore (23 km) wind farm | http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070903.wdutchwind0903/BNStory/Science/home | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,395 | juwo | 2007-09-09T03:12:30 | You might be able to get a tax credit for your prototyping | if you are incorporated. | http://www.ksrevenue.org/taxcredits-research.htm | 1 | 2 | [
52414
] | null | null | missing_parsing | Kansas Department of Revenue - Page Not Found | null | ksrevenue.gov |
The page you are looking for doesn't exist or another error occurred. Please report this to the webmaster at [email protected].
Please be sure and include the address of the page you were trying to reach as well.
GO BACK TO HOMEPAGE
| 2024-11-08T02:31:24 | null | train |
52,396 | luccastera | 2007-09-09T03:13:17 | Bringing The Valley To DC | http://www.thewebpreneur.com/2007/09/08/bringing-the-valley-to-dc/ | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,398 | vlad | 2007-09-09T03:25:00 | Unbelievable Growth is Just Beginning | http://www.fool.com/investing/international/2007/09/08/unbelievable-growth-is-just-beginning.aspx | 9 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,412 | Kaizyn | 2007-09-09T04:45:03 | Startup Question: Why Venture Capital for Web Startup? | This is probably a silly question, but this seems a good forum to get an answer: It seems to be taken as a given that any founder will sooner or later apply for VC funding. Why would a founder of a web startup ever bother with venture capital? A web startup can be built by a team of 1-4 people working on it part-time (so no need for anyone to quit their full-time jobs). The time required to build such a web system would probably be on the order of 12-18 months. Because servers, bandwidth, and/or hosting services are cheap, this can all easily be self-financed (for ~$5000-$10000?). What have I missed here in this analysis that makes venture capital desirable or necessary? | 16 | 25 | [
52510,
52473,
52417,
52420,
52451,
52460,
52484,
52485
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
52,418 | iamwil | 2007-09-09T05:27:37 | The Universe of Discourse : The envelope paradox | null | http://blog.plover.com/math/envelope.html | 4 | 0 | null | null | null | no_error | The envelope paradox | null | null |
Fri, 16 Jun 2006
The envelope paradox
[Addendum 20151130: I have since written this up in greater and more
formal detail. If you find the details here lacking, please consult
my math.se post about
it.]
This is on my mind because someone asked about it in IRC yesterday and
I was surprised at how coherently I was able to explain it on the spur
of the moment. There are several versions of this paradox. My
favorite version goes like this: you're going to play a game with an
adversary. The adversary writes two different numbers on slips of
paper and puts them in an envelope. The numbers are completely
arbitrary; they could be absolutely any numbers whatsoever: zero, or
π, or -1428573901823.00013, or anything else.
You pick one slip at random from the envelope and examine the number
written on it. You then make a prediction about whether the
other number is larger or smaller. If your prediction is
correct, you win a dollar; if it is incorrect, you lose a dollar.
Clearly, you can break even in the long run simply by making your
prediction at random. And it seems just just as clear that there is
no strategy you can use that does better than breaking even. But this
is the paradox: there is a strategy you can use that does
better than breaking even. (This is what W.V.O. Quine calls a
"veridical paradox": it's something that seems impossible, but is
nevertheless true.)
Spoilers follow, so you might want to stop reading here for
twenty-four hours and try to figure out a winning strategy
yourself.
Let's call the number you get from the envelope A and the
number still in the envelope B. You can see A, and you
are trying to predict whether B is larger or smaller than
A.
Here's your winning strategy. Before you see A,
choose a random number R. If A < R, then
conclude that A is "small", and predict that B is
larger. If A > R, make the opposite prediction.
There are three possibilities. Either (1) A and B are
both less than R, or (2) they are both greater than R,
or else (3) one is less than R and one is greater.
In case 1, you predict that B > A, and you have a 50%
probability of being correct.
In case 2, you predict that B < A, and you have a 50%
probability of being correct.
But in case 3, you win every time! If A < R
< B then you see A, conclude that A is
"small", and predict that B > A, which is correct; if
B < R < A then you see A, conclude
that A is "large", and predict that B < A,
which is correct.
Since you're breaking even in cases 1 and 2, and you have a guaranteed
win in case 3, you have a better-than-even chance of winning overall.
There's some positive probability p (which depends on the
method you use to choose R) that you have case 3, and if so,
then your expected positive return on the game is p dollars per
game.
The paradoxical part is that it initially seems as though you can't get any
idea, just from looking at A, of whether it's larger or smaller
than the unknown number B. But you can get such an idea, because
you can tell from looking at A how big it is, and big numbers
are more likely to be larger than B than small numbers are.
What you've done with R is to invent a definition of "large"
and "small" numbers: numbers larger than R are "large" and
those smaller than R are "small".
It's an arbitrary definition, and it doesn't
always succeed in distinguishing large from small numbers—it thinks
that R+1 and 1000000R+1000000 are both "large"—but it can
distinguish some large numbers from some small numbers,
and it never gets confused and concludes that x is large and
y is small when x is actually smaller than y. So
it may be arbitrary, and extremely coarse, but it is never actually wrong.
In the cases where this very coarse method of deciding "large" from
"small" fails to distinguish A from B, you get
no new information, but that's okay, because you can still break even.
But if you get lucky and the adversary has chosen numbers that you can
distinguish, then you win.
Another way to look at the paradox is like this: suppose the adversary
is required to choose his two numbers at random. Then you have a
simple winning strategy: if A is positive, predict that
B is smaller, and if A is negative, predict that
B is larger. Even when both numbers are positive or both are
negative, you win half the time; if one is positive and one is
negative, you are guaranteed a win.
If the adversary knows that this is what you are doing, he can cut you
back to merely breaking even, by limiting himself to always choosing
positive numbers. But you can foil this strategy of his by choosing
your "positive" and "negative" classes to be divided somewhere other
than at 0: instead of "positive" being "> 0" and "negative" being
"< 0", you make them mean "> R" and "< R". The
adversary still wants to choose two numbers that are always positive,
but since he doesn't know how big R is, hw doesn't know how
large he has to make his own numbers to get them both to be
"positive".
Still, this suggests the best strategy for the adversary: choose two
very very large numbers that are close together. By doing this, he
can make your expected win close to zero.
The envelope paradox is often presented in a different form: you are
given two envelopes. One contains a bunch of money, say x
dollars. The other contains twice as much. You open one envelope at
random and examine its contents. Then you choose one envelope to
keep.
A naïve analysis goes like this: I open the first envelope and
see x. I can keep this envelope and collect amount x.
If I switch, I have a 50% chance of ending up with 2x and a 50%
chance of ending up with x/2, for an expected outcome of
5x/4. Since 5x/4 > x, I should always
switch.
This is what Quine calls a "falsidical paradox": the reasoning seems
good, but leads to an impossible conclusion. The strategy of always
switching can't possibly be correct, because you could apply it with
without even seeing what is in the envelope. You could keep switching
back and forth all day, never opening either envelope, and increasing
your expected winnings to infinity.
The tricky part, again, is that having seen x in the envelope,
you cannot conclude that there is exactly a 50% chance of x
being the larger of the two amounts. You get some information from
the size of x, and if x is a large amount of money, then
the probability that x is the larger of the two amounts is thereby
greater than 0.5.
To do a full analysis, one has to ask the question of how the original
amounts were selected. Say that the two amounts are b and
2b; let's call b the "base amount". How did the
adversary select b?
Let's say that the probability of the base amount being any particular
amount x is P(x). It is impossible that b
has an equal probability of being every number, because $$\int_{-\infty}^\infty P(x) dx$$ is
required to be 1, and if P(b) is the same for every
possible base amount b, then it is a constant function, and
constant functions do not have the required property.
When you see x in the envelope, you know that one of two
situations occurred. Either x is the base amount, and so is
smaller, which occurs with probability P(x), or
x/2 is the base amount, and x itself is the larger,
which occurs with probability P(x/2). Since these are
the only possibilities, the a posteriori likelihood that x is
the smaller number is P(x)/(P(x/2) +
P(x)). This is equal to 1/2 only if P(x)
= P(x/2). Although this can occur for particular values
of x, it can't be true for every x. As x
increases, P(x) approaches zero, so for sufficiently
large x, we must have P(x/2) >
P(x), so P(x/2) + P(x) >
2P(x), and P(x)/(P(x/2) +
P(x)) < P(x)/2P(x) = 1/2.
[Other articles in category /math]
permanent link
| 2024-11-07T20:19:52 | en | train |
52,419 | iamwil | 2007-09-09T05:37:20 | Bram Cohen: IRC hackery | http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/42524.html | 4 | 4 | [
52425
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,427 | iamwil | 2007-09-09T06:06:10 | Estimating objects from serial numbers: How a statistical formula won the war | http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1824525,00.html | 26 | 8 | [
52507,
52437,
52519
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,429 | iamwil | 2007-09-09T06:07:35 | Joshua Schachter: Autoincrement considered harmful | http://joshua.schachter.org/2007/01/autoincrement.html#comments | 8 | 0 | null | null | null | no_error | autoincrement considered harmful -- joshua schachter's blog | null | null |
MySQL's auto_increment, and similar features in other databases, are a powerfully useful function but ultimately lead to problems.
The first problem is that you will be tempted to use the internal identifiers in external URLs. I realize that RESTian canon indicates that every single object have its own identifier, and many new and whizzy frameworks generate simple create/lookup/update/delete user interfaces automatically.
URLs that include an identifier will let you down for three reasons.
The first is that given the URL for some object, you can figure out the URLs for objects that were created around it. This exposes the number of objects in your database to possible competitors or other people you might not want having this information (as famously demonstrated by the Allies guessing German tank production levels by looking at the serial numbers.)
Secondly, at some point some jerk will get the idea to write a shell script with a for-loop and try to fetch every single object from your system; this is definitely no fun.
Finally, in the case of users, it allows people to derive some sort of social hierarchy. Witness the frequent hijacking and/or hacking of high-prestige low-digit ICQ ids.
The second problem, in the case of MySQL, setting a column as auto_increment requires that there be a primary key placed on this column. It's not well explained in the documentation, but under InnoDB, the primary key is similar to a unique key, except that the rows in the database are stored in the sort order of the primary key -- this is why there may only be one such key. (Other database systems refer to this as a "clustered index"). This means if you are using it merely as a join identifier, but freqently do large queries based on some other column, the rows have to be fetched from all across the disk since they are not all together. As an example, in early implementations of del.icio.us, fetching all of the bookmarks for a given URL could cause tens of thousands of disk seeks even if there was an index on that column. As a datastore grows, the location of things on disk in relation to each other becomes an important consideration for scaling.
| 2024-11-08T09:08:29 | en | train |
|
52,439 | hhm | 2007-09-09T07:02:27 | Interview with Nintendo's President (Mr. Iwata) | http://www.1101.com/iwata/index.html | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | cut_off | HOBO NIKKAN ITOI SHINBUN - 1101.com | null | null |
����
�܂��Ɋ�c����Ƙb�����Ƃ��ɁA
�u�A�C�f�A�Ƃ����̂͂Ȃɂ��H�v
�Ƃ����b����������Ȃ��ł����B
Itoi
Remember talking about the definition of "idea" before?
��c
�{�{�i�j����̂��Ƃł��ˁB
Iwata
The words of Mr.(Shigeru) Miyamoto, right?
����
�����ł��B�܂�A�{�{����ɂ��A
�u�A�C�f�A�Ƃ����̂�
�@�����̖�����C�ɉ���������̂ł���v
�Ƃ������ƂȂ�ł����A
���̘b���������݂̂�Ȃɂ����Ƃ���A
���̂��������S����܂��āB
����������c�������������Ă邱�Ƃ����A
���̋{�{����̔����̈Ӑ}�ƁA��c����̕��͂�
���킵���������Ă��炦����ȂƎv����ł����B
Itoi
He said that ideas are "something which solves multiple issues at once". This notion seemed eye-opening to my staffs. Can you explain us a bit more about the intention of his words, and your analysis of it?
��c
����́A�Q�[���������Ă�Ƃ��ɁA
�{�{����������ł���B
�ł�����A�{�{�����
�Q�[��������Ƃ��̂ЂƂ̕��@�_�Ƃ��āA
����������Ă���ł����ǁA
�킽���́A�Q�[���Â���Ɍ��炸
���\�ȍl�������Ǝv����ł���ˁB
Iwata
Those words came out when we were designing a video game software. I think Mr.Miyamoto said it as an example of a method for designing video games. I actually perceive this as a very versatile concept, which can be applied to many aspects of life.
����
�����ł��ˁB
Itoi
Uh-huh.
��c
�ǂ�Ȃ��̂ł��������Ǝv����ł����ǁA
�Ȃɂ�������Ƃ����āA
�u������𗧂Ă�����炪�������v
�Ƃ�����肪�˂ɂ���킯�ł��B
������A�Ȃɂ��̂��Ƃɑ��āA
�u����������悭�ł���v
�u���������爫���Ȃ�v
�Ƃ����I��������킯�ł����A
�����ɂȂɂ����i������Ƃ��ɂ́A
�u�ЂƂ������������Ƃ�����v�Ƃ���
�b�܂ꂽ��ԂɂȂ邱�ƂȂ�Ă܂��Ȃ��āA
���������ɍ��������Ƃ������������ł��B
Iwata
There's always the dilemma of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" when creating something. There are options that improve the product, and there are also options that work the other way. The thing is that you barely have cases in which there exists only a single problem. You usually have problems occurring everywhere, lots of them.
����
�͂��A�͂��B
Itoi
Yes, yes.
��c
����́A���i��������Ȃ��āA
�g�D�����������A�ΐl�W�����������B
�������������Ƃɑ��āA
�u����́A����������A���������炢����ł��v
���āA�ЂƂ������P�����Ƃ��Ă�
�S�̂�O�i�����邱�Ƃ͂ł��Ȃ��B
�ЂƂw�͂��Ă悭�����Ƃ��Ă��A
�Ȃ�炩�̕���p���o�Ă��܂����A
���܂܂ł��܂������Ă����Ƃ�
���܂������Ȃ��Ȃ���������܂��B
������A�A�C�f�A���o����c�ȂǂŁA
�u���̖����ǂ����悤�H�v
�Ƃ������Ƃ�b�������Ă���Ƃ��ɁA
���R�����Ȑl�������Ȃ��ƌ�����ł����ǁA
�����Ă�����́A�ЂƂ̖����������邾���ŁA
�ق��̖�������������킯�ł͂Ȃ��B
�܂�A�����������������O�i���Ȃ���ł��B
Iwata
I'm not talking solely about designing a product. The same happens in organizations, or in personal relationships. Presenting a single antidote for a single problem doesn't get you anywhere. It always causes side effects. It sometimes even raises trouble to issues which were fine until then. People come up with many suggestions, but usually it only gives a solution to a single problem, and only that. A project doesn't advance much with a solution like that.
����
�����A���������Ƃ���ł��ˁB
Itoi
I know what you mean.
��c
�ŁA�Q�[���̘b�ɖ߂��Ă����ƁA�����̏ꍇ�A
�������낳������Ȃ��ĔY�ނ킯�ł��B
���R�l�^����������d���܂�Ă�قǁA
�������낢�킯�����A�l�͖������Ă����B
�ł�����ŁA����̂Ɋ��蓖�Ă���
�l�ނ̗ʂ⎞�Ԃ͗L���ł��B
�L���̒��Łu�����قǂ����v���Č���ꂽ���āA
�����ł��Ȃ��킯�ł���ˁB
�ł��A�Ƃ��ǂ��A�������ЂƂ̂��Ƃ�����ƁA
���������悭�Ȃ��āA���������悭�Ȃ��āA
����ɗ\�z�����Ȃ��������܂ʼn�������A
�Ƃ����Ƃ��������ł���B
Iwata
Often times, the game not being entertaining enough are the problems you face when designing video games. The more ideas put in, the more fun it brings forth, and people enjoy the game more. However, the amount of time and human resources that can be put into creation is always limited. It's not realistic to simply propose "more" of something when you have limitations. Sometimes, one single idea solves one problem, then another, and even issues that were thought to be totally unrelated.
����
�͂��A�͂��B
�i���͂̃X�^�b�t�Ɍ������āj
�����A�������낢���낤�H
Itoi
That does happen sometimes. (to the staffs) Interesting, isn't it?
�ꓯ
�i�j
All
(laugh)
��c
���������u�ЂƂ̂��Ɓv���A
�{�{����́u�Ȃ����A�Ȃ����v����
�����l���Ă��ł��B
���̂������������A���X�ƁB
�́A�킽�����R���ɏZ��ł�����
�i��c���ȑO�В��߂Ă���
�@�g�`�k�������͎R�����ɂ���j�ɁA
�ˑR�A�{�{���d�b��
�����Ă������Ƃ������ł����ǁA
���̑�ꐺ�ȂƎv���܂��H
�u�킩������A��c����v���Č�����ł���B
�������A�킽���ɂ�
�Ȃɂ��Ȃ��킩��Ȃ���ł����ǁi�j�B
Iwata
Mr.Miyamoto is constantly trying to find that kind of "idea". I mean, constantly. Persistently. One day he called me up suddenly, it was when I used to live in Yamanashi. (Mr.Iwata had been president of HAL Laboratory, Inc., which is located in Yamanashi Prefecture) Do you know what the first thing he said was?
"I got it!"
(laughing) I had no idea what he was talking about.
����
�i�j
Itoi
(laugh)
��c
�{�{���u�킩�����v�ƌ������̂�
���̂Ƃ��ɂ�������ɂ����Ă����Q�[����
�A�C�f�A��������ł����ǁA�܂��ɁA
�u���̃A�C�f�A�ŁA�Y��ł��肪�A
�@�O�l������ɂ��ꂢ�ɂȂ�v
�Ƃ������̂�������ł��ˁB
Iwata
What he "got" was an idea for a game we were designing together. This idea was something that solved multiple issues, all at once.
����
�܂��ɁA���ꂪ�u�A�C�f�A�v���ƁB
Itoi
That's what he called an "idea".
��c
�����Ȃ�ł��B
�ЂƂv���������Ƃɂ���āA
���ꂪ���܂������A��������܂������d�d�B
���ꂪ�u�����A�C�f�A�v�ł����āA
�����������̂������邱�Ƃ������A
�S�̂�O�i�����A�S�[���߂Â��Ă����B
�f�B���N�^�[�ƌĂ��l�̎d���́A
����������邱�ƂȂ���
�{�{����͍l���Ă����ł��ˁB
Iwata
Exactly. One single inspiration that makes so many things work. That's what you call a "great idea", and finding that moves things forward, moves it towards the goal. Mr. Miyamoto thinks that it's the game director's task to find those "ideas".
����
����́A�{�{����
�����܂Ő������Č������킯����Ȃ��āA
�{�{����̎d���������ƌ��Ă���
��c��������������Ƃł���ˁB
Itoi
He didn't actually say this, right? You've picked this up working with him for a long time, observing his ways.
��c
�����ł��ˁB
�{�{����Ǝd�������Ă���ƁA
���������u�킩������v�ƌ������Ƃ�
���т��сA�����ł��B
����������������x�����Ă��邤���ɁA
�ǂ����A���̐l�̖������̕��@�Ƃ����̂́A
�����������Ƃ��d�v�����邱�Ƃɂ����
�������S�[���ɓ����Ă�Ȃ��āA
�킩���Ă���킯�ł��B
Iwata
Yes. I've seen him "get it" many times. Through those instances, I've come to learn his emphasis on that method, and how he guides projects to goals using that method.
����
�������낢�Ȃ��i�j�B
Itoi
That's really interesting. (laugh)
��c
�ŁA����������Ȃ�Ɏ~�߂�ƁA
����́A�܂������Q�[���Ɍ������b����Ȃ����ƁB
���̒��A������𗧂Ă��
�����炪�����Ȃ����Ƃ��炯�ł��B
����������Ԃ��u�g���[�h�I�t�v�ƌĂԂ�ł����A
���̒��̂�����l������
�g���[�h�I�t�̖��ɒ��ʂ��Ă����ł��ˁB
�����͂�������g�������������B
�l�������������������B
�����鎞�Ԃ͒����ق����������̂��ł���B
����Ȃ��Ƃ͂킩�肫���Ă܂����ǁA
���̂킩�肫�������Ƃ����Ă��邤���́A
�ق��̐l�Ɠ������@�Ői��ł��������ł�����
�����͂��Ȃ���ł���B
Iwata
This really isn't limited to game design. The world is full of "damned if you do, damned if you don'ts". You call it "trade-off". Everyone is confronted with trade-offs. The more budget, the better. The more human resource, the better. The more time, the better. That's obvious. However, doing the obvious means doing the same thing with everyone else. That doesn't nurture competitiveness.
����
�����������ɂȂ����Ⴂ�܂�����ˁB
Itoi
It becomes a matter of who does it more.
��c
�͂��B�ł��A����Ƃ����g�ݍ��킹���
�����������Ƃ��N���邼�A
���Ă����̂��������Ƃ��́A
���ꂪ�ӂ��̐l��
�C�Â��ĂȂ�����ł������قǁA
���l���o����B
����ŁA�{�{���Ȃɂ��̉�c�ŁA
�u���������̂��A�C�f�A���Ă�����v
���Č������̂����Ƃ��ɁA
����́A�������K���͈͂��L���l����������A
�����������������z�ŕ������l���悤��
����v���悤�ɂȂ��āA
���̊ԁA���䂳��Ƃ��b�����Ƃ���
���̂Ƃ��̂��Ƃ�b������ł����ǂˁB
Iwata
But when you find a solution by combining issues, the more unique it is, the more value it brings. When Mr.Miyamoto said "that's what you call an idea", it came to me. It's such a concept that applies to various aspects of life, so I really wanted to incorporate it into my way of thinking. I remember talking about this the other time we met.
����
�����̖��������������Ȃ��āA
���������������������A
����́A�ȒP�Ȃ�ł���ˁB
Itoi
If you're looking for a solution that solves only a single issue, and not multiple issues, it's easy.
��c
�ȒP�ł��B
Iwata
It really is.
����
�i�ׂ̐Ȃ̍����ƌ������̐Ȃ̉i�c���w���Ȃ���j
�܂�A��������̖�����Ȃ��Ƃ����Ƃ��ɂ��A
����ɉi�c�����Ⴄ�悤�ȕ��@�Ȃ�
���ƊȒP�Ɏv�������ł���B
�]�T�̂����Ƃ�g�D�قǁA
�������������@��I��ł��܂��ă_���ɂȂ��ł��B
����͉����ł�����Ă����Ƃ��ɁA
����݂Ԃ��ɉ��������Ⴄ��ł���B
�܂��A��������������āA
�u���A�i�c����Ȃ��v�Ƃ����̂�
���x�͉i�c����������Ă��Ă����ӂ��Ɂd�d�B
Itoi
(Pointing at Sato sitting next to him, and Nagata sitting across him)
See, if Sato's life is in danger, it's easy to find a way to save him at the cost of Nagata's life. The more leeway an enterprise or an organization has, the more they tend to choose such solutions. They solve issues one by one. First they save Sato, then they realize Nagata's in danger, so they choose to save Nagata, and on and on.
��c
�����Ɏ�ԂƃG�l���M�[���������Ⴄ��ł��B
Iwata
By putting in an endless amount of time and energy.
����
�����Ȃ�ł���ˁB
Itoi
Exactly.
��c
�u���������班�Ȃ����悤�v
�u����Ȃ������瑝�₻���v�Ƃ����ӂ��ɁA
���܋N�����Ă鎖�ۂ����̂܂�
����݂Ԃ��ɉ������Ă����̂́A
�N�ł��ł��邱�Ƃ����A�H�v������Ȃ��B
���Ƃ��A���闿���X�ŁA���q����
�o�Ă��������ɂ��āu�����v�ƌ����Ă�B
���̂Ƃ��ɁA�u�����v�ƌ����Ă�l�́A
�Ȃ��u�����v�ƌ����Ă�̂��B
���̍������ɂ�����̂́A
���́u�����v���Ƃ���肶��Ȃ��āA
�u�܂����v���Ƃ���肾�����肷���ł��B
Iwata
Everyone can solve problems one by one. "If there's too much of something, just make it less", or the other way around. That's just responding to each issue. For example, if a customer complained at a restaurant that a dish is "too much", what is he/she really saying? Maybe the real problem may be how the dish tastes, and not the amount.
�ꓯ
���[�[�[�B
All
Ah....
��c
������A�{���͂������đ������Ȃ��̂ɁA
�u�����v���Č���ꂽ��肾�������āA
�u�܂����v���Ƃɖڂ��������Ȃ�������A
�ʂ����Ȃ������Ƃ���ʼn����ɂ͂Ȃ�Ȃ���ł��B
�{���̖�肪�u�܂����v���Ƃ��Ƃ�����A
�u�܂����v���Ƃ��Ȃ��ƁA
�u�������班�Ȃ����܂����v�Ƃ����̂́A
�ꌩ�������Ă�悤�ŁA���͂Ȃɂ��������ĂȂ��B
Iwata
If the chef only sees the amount of his dish as the problem, changing the amount doesn't solve anything. He has to be able to find the real issue and improve the taste to truly solve this problem.
����
���̂Ƃ���ł��ˁB
Itoi
That's true.
��c
���ƂȂ��Ă��鎖�ۂ̍�����H���Ă����ƁA
�������̕ʂ̏Ǐ�Ɍ������肪
���͍������łȂ����Ă邱�Ƃ���������A
�ЂƂ�ς���ƁA
�ꌩ�Ȃ��肪�����Ȃ�����
�ʂ̂Ƃ���ɂ��e���������āA
�����Ȗ�肪��������ɂȂ��Ȃ����肷��B
���������ӂ��ɁA�ЂƂ̃A�C�f�A��
�����Ȗ���������ɉ������āA
�S�̂���C�Ɍ��n�������̂Ƃ��ɁA
�{�{����́u�킩������v���āA
�l�ɓd�b�����������Ȃ��ł��傤�ˁB
�i�����܂��I�j
Iwata
When you dig deep down until you hit the root of the problem, you sometimes find that what seems to be isolated matters are actually connected. A single change can have impact on matters that were thought having no relation. Different problems can be solved at once. When a single idea solves various matters, those are the times when Mr.Miyamoto "get it", and calls you up all of a sudden. You have a much clearer vision when you "get it".
(Continued!)
| 2024-11-08T08:14:41 | ja | train |
|
52,443 | hhm | 2007-09-09T07:08:48 | How to Be a Leader in Your Field | http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/leader.html | 12 | 2 | [
52445,
52506
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,459 | gibsonf1 | 2007-09-09T09:23:39 | With new systems, amateurs mashing up / Free technology allows users to customize data | null | http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/09/09/MN2VRTLQD.DTL | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,464 | ulfstein | 2007-09-09T10:03:45 | How to choose the right web developer | http://www.foundread.com/view/choosing-the-right | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | no_article | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-07T21:59:34 | null | train |
|
52,465 | vlad | 2007-09-09T10:09:19 | "Go West, Young Startup" | http://www.innoeco.com/2007/09/go-west-young-start-up.html | 1 | -1 | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,466 | vlad | 2007-09-09T10:14:06 | The Face of Entrepreneurship Gets Younger and Younger | http://streetsideinvestor.com/index.php/2007/09/07/the-face-of-entrepreneurship-keeps-getting-younger-and-younger/ | 1 | -1 | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,471 | omarabid | 2007-09-09T10:58:47 | New: Barcode with Intelli-sense, FREE life-time | New: Barcode with Intelli-sense, FREE life-time | http://www.barcodemaker.uni.cc | 1 | -1 | null | null | true | missing_parsing | uni.cc | null | null |
2024 Copyright. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy
| 2024-11-08T21:35:16 | null | train |
52,476 | terpua | 2007-09-09T12:08:29 | Apple iTunes glitch reveals movie rental preparations | http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/09/08/apple_itunes_glitch_reveals_movie_rental_preparations.html | 4 | 0 | null | null | null | no_error | Apple iTunes glitch reveals movie rental preparations | 2007-09-08T19:00:00+00:00 | AppleInsider Staff |
While attempting to notify Apple of a problem with its iTunes Store, one user stumbled upon evidence that suggests the company may be gearing up to offer movie rentals through the digital download service.
"I was trying to report a problem via iTunes, and this pop-up for selecting a reason contains some interesting/revealing strings," David Watanabe wrote in a posting the popular Flickr image sharing website. "[It] looks like 'RentalMovies' will be coming to the iTunes store."
Among the reasons for reporting a problem listed in the Apple-created menus were "DidNotReceiveMovie-RentalMovie," "AccidentalPurchase-RentalMovie," "ContentQuality-RentalMovie," "DuplicatePurchase-RentalMovie," "WrongVErsion-RentalMovie," "BadMetadata-RentalMovie" and "Other-RentalMovie."
Rumors that Apple would eventually be compelled to supplement its a la carte movie download service with a rental option have been making the rounds ever since the company first began offering downloadable flicks nearly two years ago.
The most recent report on the matter came courtesy of the Financial Times, which reported in June that Apple was in advanced talks with Hollywood’s largest movie studios about launching an online film rental service to challenge cable and satellite TV operators.
According to the report, individual films on the iTunes service would fetch $2.99 for a 30-day rental and would be governed by digital rights-management software that would allow users to transfer the movie "from a computer to at least one other device such as the video iPod or iPhone."
| 2024-11-08T12:54:12 | en | train |
|
52,480 | danw | 2007-09-09T13:12:31 | Haro on Making Habbo Hotel a Success | http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15397 | 10 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,481 | raganwald | 2007-09-09T13:15:58 | Selling your own software vs. "Working for the Man." | http://successfulsoftware.net/2007/09/09/selling-your-own-software-vs-working-for-the-man/ | 9 | 5 | [
52674,
52505
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,482 | nickb | 2007-09-09T13:30:30 | The difference between Marketing, PR, Advertising and Branding | null | http://adsoftheworld.com/blog/ivan/2007/apr/11/the_difference_between_marketing_pr_advertising_and_branding | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,486 | rams | 2007-09-09T13:43:39 | The X-Y Problem | http://wooledge.org/mywiki/XyProblem | 17 | 1 | [
52799
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,487 | charzom | 2007-09-09T13:45:38 | Coding Horror: Rainbow Hash Cracking | http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000949.html | 26 | 9 | [
52489,
52498,
52526,
52497,
52825,
52523
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,491 | transburgh | 2007-09-09T14:20:45 | Top 5 tips to become a productive student entrepreneur | null | http://www.college-startup.com/college/top-5-tips-to-become-a-productive-student-entrepreneur/ | 4 | 3 | [
52540,
52549,
52516
] | null | null | http_404 | 404 Not Found | null | null |
The requested URL was not found on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found
error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
| 2024-11-08T02:07:41 | null | train |
52,492 | iamwil | 2007-09-09T14:30:13 | Voting Games: Part I | null | http://www.ams.org/featurecolumn/archive/weighted1.html | 4 | 0 | null | null | null | http_404 | American Mathematical Society | null | null |
American Mathematical Society ·
201 Charles Street Providence, Rhode Island 02904-2213 · Contact Us
AMS, American Mathematical Society, the tri-colored AMS logo, and Advancing research, Creating connections, are trademarks and services marks of the American Mathematical Society and registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
© Copyright
American Mathematical Society · View Our Privacy Statement · Terms of Use · Accessibility and AMS Online Content
| 2024-11-08T09:40:16 | null | train |
52,495 | nickb | 2007-09-09T15:51:26 | Dilbert: "I was wondering if our new service is Web 2.0 or Web 1.0" | http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2007090116399.jpg | 28 | 1 | [
52750
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,499 | kkim | 2007-09-09T16:28:10 | Polymers are forever (scroll down to the excerpt) | null | http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14194915 | 8 | 1 | [
52736
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,500 | jyrzyk | 2007-09-09T16:30:55 | The Dark Side: What we have lost to light pollution | null | http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/20/070820fa_fact_owen?printable=true | 6 | 1 | [
52542
] | null | null | no_error | The Dark Side | 2007-08-12T20:00:00.000-04:00 | David Owen | A time-exposure photograph of the Milky Way over the New Mexico desert. The word “galaxy” comes from the Greek for milk.CHRIS COOK/PHOTO RESEARCHERSIn 1610, Galileo Galilei published a small book describing astronomical observations that he had made of the skies above Padua. His homemade telescopes had less magnifying and resolving power than most beginners’ telescopes sold today, yet with them he made astonishing discoveries: that the moon has mountains and other topographical features; that Jupiter is orbited by satellites, which he called planets; and that the Milky Way is made up of individual stars. It may seem strange that this last observation could have surprised anyone, but in Galileo’s time people assumed that the Milky Way must be some kind of continuous substance. It truly resembled a streak of spilled liquid—our word “galaxy” comes from the Greek for milk—and it was so bright that it cast shadows on the ground (as did Jupiter and Venus). Today, by contrast, most Americans are unable to see the Milky Way in the sky above the place where they live, and those who can see it are sometimes baffled by its name.The stars have not become dimmer; rather, the Earth has become vastly brighter, so that celestial objects are harder to see. Air pollution has made the atmosphere less transparent and more reflective, and high levels of terrestrial illumination have washed out the stars overhead—a phenomenon called “sky glow.” Anyone who has flown across the country on a clear night has seen the landscape ablaze with artificial lights, especially in urban areas. Today, a person standing on the observation deck of the Empire State Building on a cloudless night would be unable to discern much more than the moon, the brighter planets, and a handful of very bright stars—less than one per cent of what Galileo would have been able to see without a telescope. Amateur astronomers sometimes classify nighttime darkness on the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale, which is based on a number of criteria, among them “limiting magnitude,” or the brightness of the faintest celestial objects that are visible without magnification. The scale, composed of nine points, was devised in 2001 by John E. Bortle, a retired Westchester County fire chief and a monthly columnist for Sky & Telescope. “One of the problems I was addressing was that younger amateur astronomers, especially east of the Mississippi, had never seen a dark sky at all,” he told me recently. “People will sometimes come up from the city and call me and say, ‘John, I’ve found this fabulous dark site, it’s totally black, you can’t imagine how good it is.’ So I’ll go and have a look, but it’s always poor. They have no comparison to work against.”In Galileo’s time, nighttime skies all over the world would have merited the darkest Bortle ranking, Class 1. Today, the sky above New York City is Class 9, at the other extreme of the scale, and American suburban skies are typically Class 5, 6, or 7. The very darkest places in the continental United States today are almost never darker than Class 2, and are increasingly threatened. For someone standing on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon on a moonless night, the brightest feature of the sky is not the Milky Way but the glow of Las Vegas, a hundred and seventy-five miles away. To see skies truly comparable to those which Galileo knew, you would have to travel to such places as the Australian outback and the mountains of Peru. And civilization’s assault on the stars has consequences far beyond its impact on astronomers. Excessive, poorly designed outdoor lighting wastes electricity, imperils human health and safety, disturbs natural habitats, and, increasingly, deprives many of us of a direct relationship with the nighttime sky, which throughout human history has been a powerful source of reflection, inspiration, discovery, and plain old jaw-dropping wonder.David L. Crawford earned his Ph.D. in astronomy in 1958 and spent nearly all his professional life at Kitt Peak National Observatory, on a mountaintop fifty-six miles southwest of Tucson, Arizona. By 1970, he had noticed, with alarm, a significant decrease in astronomical visibility. Tucson was growing rapidly, and so was its sky glow. With a colleague, he persuaded the city to adopt an ordinance governing exterior lighting, and later they persuaded other Arizona cities and counties to pass similar regulations. In 1988, Crawford and another friend formed a nonprofit organization called the International Dark-Sky Association. “We’re sort of a nighttime Sierra Club,” he told me, during a recent visit to Tucson. He retired from Kitt Peak in 1995 and has worked full time for the I.D.A. ever since, often putting in sixty-hour workweeks. He has the complexion of a man who doesn’t spend a lot of time outdoors during daylight, and speaks in the modulated tones of someone accustomed to talking while others are asleep. “We’re on a mission to change the world at night,” he said.The I.D.A.’s headquarters is a warren of small offices, accommodating a dozen or so staff members and a shifting group of volunteers and researchers, around the corner from a (non-related) store that sells light fixtures. Crawford and his staff devote much of their time to proselytizing for dark-sky regulations and working with manufacturers to improve lighting products. Hanging on a wall in a conference room is a map that shows the geographical distribution of the organization’s eleven thousand members. The states with the highest representation are California (fifteen hundred and thirty), Arizona (six hundred and seventy), New York (five hundred and one), and Massachusetts (four hundred and eighty-two). The I.D.A. also has members in seventy-eight foreign countries, including Iraq and Iran, where astronomy is a popular hobby, especially among girls and young women. Authorities in Sa’adat-shahr, about four hundred miles south of Tehran, periodically cut off all electric power in the town in order to improve visibility at nighttime “star parties” conducted by a local teacher.When the I.D.A. began, Crawford’s interest in outdoor lighting was limited to its impact on observatories; today, the organization’s brief covers everything from advising law-enforcement officers to assessing the effects of artificial lighting on wildlife. On the evening of my visit, while Crawford and I waited for the sky to grow darker, we went to dinner at a relatively new shopping mall on Tucson’s outskirts. As we drove up, Crawford explained that the mall had been of particular interest to the I.D.A.: “The original lighting system for this mall was put in by somebody from out of town, and it didn’t meet the Tucson code, so the developer had to call in a consultant and change it all. Now it’s one of the best in town, and we actually gave them an award a few years ago.”The mall’s large parking lot was fully illuminated—as we walked from the car to the restaurant, I had no trouble reading notes that I had scribbled in my notebook—but it was free of what dark-sky advocates call “glare bombs”: fixtures that cast much of their light sideways, into the eyes of passersby, or upward, into the sky. Tucson’s code limits the brightness of exterior fixtures and requires most of them to be of a type usually known as “full cutoff” or “fully shielded,” meaning that they cast no light above the horizontal plane and employ a light source that cannot be seen by someone standing to the side. These are not necessarily more difficult or expensive to manufacture than traditional lights, and they typically cost less to operate. Calgary, Alberta, recently cut its electricity expenditures by more than two million dollars a year, by switching to full-cutoff, reduced-wattage street lights.Diminishing the level of nighttime lighting can actually increase visibility. In recent years, the California Department of Transportation has greatly reduced its use of continuous lighting on its highways, and has increased its use of reflectors and other passive guides, which concentrate luminance where drivers need it rather than dispersing it over broad areas. (Passive guides also save money, since they don’t require electricity.) F.A.A.-regulated airport runways, though they don’t use reflectors, are lit in a somewhat similar fashion, with rows of guidance lights rather than with high-powered floodlights covering broad expanses of macadam. This makes the runways easier for pilots to pick out at night, because the key to visibility, on runways as well as on roads, is contrast.After dinner, Crawford showed me his home, in a subdivision of small, closely spaced, desert-colored stucco town houses. Tucson gives individual neighborhoods the right to choose whether they want street lights (and to pay for them if they do). Most of the newer, more affluent residential areas, and a number of commercial blocks, have elected to do without. Crawford’s subdivision, to his annoyance, does have street lights, and the fixtures, though technically shielded, have frosted-glass side panels, which diffuse the light in a way that turns them into glare bombs. Crawford pointed out a cluster of mailboxes across the street from his garage. The lighting near the mailboxes was of a type that Crawford calls “criminal-friendly”: it was almost painful to look at, and it turned the walkway behind the boxes into an impenetrable void. “The eye adapts to the brightest thing in sight,” he said. “When you have glare, the eye adapts to the glare, but then you can’t see anything darker.” The human retina contains two kinds of photoreceptors—cones, which react quickly to fine details and colors, and rods, which, though slower and bad at colors, are far more numerous and many times more sensitive to light. It’s mainly the rods that enable us to see at night, and they are so sensitive that they can take up to an hour to recover their full function after exposure to a light source no brighter than a desk lamp. Deer, which have an even higher proportion of rods to cones, have excellent nighttime vision but appear extremely vulnerable to temporary blinding by bright light—perhaps a reason that they have difficulty in getting out of the way of cars on dark roads. People may experience a similar phenomenon driving away from a highly illuminated outdoor area, such as a gas station with an intensely bright canopy.Much so-called security lighting is designed with little thought for how eyes—or criminals—operate. Marcus Felson, a professor at the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, has concluded that lighting is effective in preventing crime mainly if it enables people to notice criminal activity as it’s taking place, and if it doesn’t help criminals to see what they’re doing. Bright, unshielded floodlights—one of the most common types of outdoor security lighting in the country—often fail on both counts, as do all-night lights installed on isolated structures or on parts of buildings that can’t be observed by passersby (such as back doors). A burglar who is forced to use a flashlight, or whose movement triggers a security light controlled by an infrared motion sensor, is much more likely to be spotted than one whose presence is masked by the blinding glare of a poorly placed metal halide “wall pack.” In the early seventies, the public-school system in San Antonio, Texas, began leaving many of its school buildings, parking lots, and other property dark at night and found that the no-lights policy not only reduced energy costs but also dramatically cut vandalism.Most people don’t notice bad nighttime lighting; if you do, it can make you slightly crazed. When I’m driving at night, my wife has to tell me to watch the road instead of looking back over my shoulder at a yard whose trees have floodlights in their branches, or at an empty parking lot so bright that you could deliver babies in it. The Connecticut town where I live was incorporated in 1779. Many residents are protective of the village green, and become agitated if anyone suggests doing something to it that they consider unhistorical, such as painting a house a color other than white. Yet the green’s focal point, the two-hundred-plus-year-old First Congregational Church, is lit up at night like a convenience store, and with two jarringly different types of illumination: the broad portico is lit with warm incandescent lamps, while the steeple and the clock tower are bathed in the icy glare of six mercury-vapor spotlights. A friend lives across from the church, and the lights give her living room a cold glow, as though someone had forgotten to close the door of a refrigerator. Obviously, Americans two centuries ago didn’t point spotlights at their buildings (and therefore enjoyed the extinct pleasure of seeing those buildings by moonlight and starlight), yet I would bet that most of my town’s residents, if they think about it at all, consider lighting up an old New England church not an offensive anachronism but almost a matter of civic duty.I’m the chairman of my town’s zoning commission, and we recently adopted our first regulations governing residential outdoor lighting. The rules prohibit unshielded exterior lamps and limit the lighting of trees and other vegetation, but, like all our regulations, they apply only to installations made after the date of the change, and they will be difficult to enforce. It doesn’t help that the town itself is a conspicuous offender. A walkway near the town hall is lit by pole-mounted “Colonial” lanterns of a familiar type, with unshielded lamps and poles a bit less than six feet tall, so that most of the light is projected into the eyes of pedestrians. When the lamps are turned on, the base of each fixture casts a dense black shadow, about sixteen feet in diameter, onto the grass and pavement directly below it, as though the purpose of the lamp were to shed darkness rather than light. Some residents have objected that the new lighting regulations unnecessarily limit the freedom of individuals to do as they like on their own property. But photons don’t stop at lot lines. (If someone installed a basic Home Depot wall pack on the moon and aimed it at the Earth, you’d be able to see the light, when it wasn’t itself in direct sunlight, with a moderately powerful hobbyist’s telescope.) People who decide to illuminate their trees at night, or to install unshielded floodlights on the corners of their garage, shining into a bedroom in a house next door, are making a decision for their neighbors as well as for themselves.My friend Ken Daniel is a lighting designer. About a decade ago, he told me something that changed the way I think about the night. It was early evening, and we were sitting with some other people in an unelectrified barn on Martha’s Vineyard and looking out at the ocean, and he observed that we were doing something that Americans almost never do anymore: watching it get dark. In the early nineteen-nineties, Daniel worked in Los Angeles and he and his family lived in Glendale. His wife, Gina, told me that the street lights and other lights in their neighborhood were so bright that their bedrooms never got fully dark at night, even though they had curtains. When the Northridge earthquake struck, in 1994, the first thing she noticed, after the shaking had awakened her, was that she couldn’t see. “The earthquake had knocked out the power all over the city, and everything was black,” she said. “When we got the kids and ran outside, we found all our neighbors standing in the street, looking up at the sky and saying, ‘Wow.’ ”Growing numbers of us pass most of our waking hours “in a box, looking at a box,” as Dave Crawford put it: we spend our days inside offices, looking at computer screens, and our evenings inside houses, looking at television screens. Fewer and fewer of us spend much time outside at all, except in automobiles—and when we do venture outdoors after dark we are usually just stepping into yet another box, the glowing canopy that our lights have projected into the sky.The twenty-four-hour day/night cycle, which is also known as the circadian clock, influences physiological processes in virtually all living things. Pervasive artificial illumination has existed for such a brief period that not even the species that invented it has had time to adapt, biologically or otherwise. The most widely discussed human malady related to the disturbance of circadian rhythms is jet lag, but there are others. Richard Stevens, a cancer epidemiologist at the University of Connecticut Health Center, in Farmington, has suggested a link between cancer and the “circadian disruption” of hormones caused by artificial lighting. Early in his career, Stevens was one of many researchers struck by the markedly high incidence of breast cancer among women in the industrialized world, in comparison with those in developing countries, and he at first supported the most common early hypothesis, which was that the cause must be dietary. Yet repeated studies found no clear link to food. In the early eighties, Stevens told me recently, “I literally woke up in the middle of the night—there was a street lamp outside the window, and it was so bright that I could almost read in my bedroom—and I thought, Could it be that?” A few years later, he persuaded the authors of the Nurses’ Health Study, one of the largest and most rigorous investigations of women’s medical issues ever undertaken, to add questions about nighttime employment, and the study subsequently revealed a strong association between working the night shift and an increased risk of breast cancer. Eva Schernhammer, of the Harvard Medical School, and Karl Schulmeister, an Austrian physicist, analyzed the work-shift data from the Nurses’ Study several years ago, and wrote, “We hypothesize that the potential primary culprit for this observed association is the lack of melatonin, a cancer-protective agent whose production is severely diminished in people exposed to light at night.” | 2024-11-08T00:19:24 | en | train |
52,501 | robg | 2007-09-09T16:45:29 | What SAT Scores Say About Your Hedge Fund | http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/business/yourmoney/09stra.html?ex=1346990400&en=23f822b1020865e1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss | 14 | 14 | [
52525,
52513,
52535
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,517 | moonman | 2007-09-09T18:23:16 | Hypothetical Question regarding Intellectual Property/NDAs | How do I ensure that the evaluators of the Y Combinator application do not steal my intellectual property? Especially in the event that the initial application is rejected for reasons not relating to the viability of the idea itself. <p>Is there an implied non disclose agreement/non compete agreement on the part of the evaluators when they evaluate the vast number of intellectual property submitted to them? | 2 | 8 | [
52521,
52527,
53291
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
52,518 | jyrzyk | 2007-09-09T18:23:41 | 360 degree panoramas of 7 famous world sites | null | http://www.panoramas.dk/7-wonders/ | 2 | 2 | [
52537,
52534
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,524 | falsestprophet | 2007-09-09T19:00:05 | ImInLikeWithYou seems to be hiring. Does anyone know who funded them and the size of the investment? | 1 | 1 | [
52656
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
||
52,529 | amichail | 2007-09-09T19:30:39 | Researchers show that liberals and conservatives approach everyday decisions differently. | http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-politics10sep10,0,5982337.story | 14 | 12 | [
52577,
52649,
52569,
52555
] | null | null | no_error | Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain - Los Angeles Times | 2013-07-24T23:47:25.000Z | Denise Gellene | Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.In a simple experiment reported todayin the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at New York University and UCLA show that political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information.Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.The results show “there are two cognitive styles -- a liberal style and a conservative style,” said UCLA neurologist Dr. Marco Iacoboni, who was not connected to the latest research.Participants were college students whose politics ranged from “very liberal” to “very conservative.” They were instructed to tap a keyboard when an M appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping when they saw a W.M appeared four times more frequently than W, conditioning participants to press a key in knee-jerk fashion whenever they saw a letter.Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a more appropriate response (not pressing the key). Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M.Researchers got the same results when they repeated the experiment in reverse, asking another set of participants to tap when a W appeared.Frank J. Sulloway, a researcher at UC Berkeley’s Institute of Personality and Social Research who was not connected to the study, said the results “provided an elegant demonstration that individual differences on a conservative-liberal dimension are strongly related to brain activity.”Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.Sulloway said the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat who opposed Bush in the 2004 presidential race, as a “flip-flopper” for changing his mind about the conflict.Based on the results, he said, liberals could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.“There is ample data from the history of science showing that social and political liberals indeed do tend to support major revolutions in science,” said Sulloway, who has written about the history of science and has studied behavioral differences between conservatives and liberals.Lead author David Amodio, an assistant professor of psychology at New York University, cautioned that the study looked at a narrow range of human behavior and that it would be a mistake to conclude that one political orientation was better. The tendency of conservatives to block distracting information could be a good thing depending on the situation, he said.Political orientation, he noted, occurs along a spectrum, and positions on specific issues, such as taxes, are influenced by many factors, including education and wealth. Some liberals oppose higher taxes and some conservatives favor abortion rights.Still, he acknowledged that a meeting of the minds between conservatives and liberals looked difficult given the study results.“Does this mean liberals and conservatives are never going to agree?” Amodio asked. “Maybe it suggests one reason why they tend not to get along.”[email protected] More to Read | 2024-11-08T11:35:53 | en | train |
|
52,530 | edu | 2007-09-09T19:33:38 | Will Parrot ever truly deliver? | http://pinderkent.blogsavy.com/archives/124 | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | fetch failed | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T07:59:56 | null | train |
|
52,531 | nickb | 2007-09-09T19:34:25 | What kernel hackers look like - Kernel Summit 2007 group photo | null | http://lwn.net/Articles/248891/ | 17 | 3 | [
52550
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,532 | nickb | 2007-09-09T19:37:36 | Researchers show that liberals and conservatives approach everyday decisions differently | http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-politics10sep10,0,5982337.story?coll=la-home-center | 2 | -1 | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,533 | edu | 2007-09-09T19:42:42 | PG: A couple of questions about Arc. | Hacker news has been running for more than a half year without any noticeable down time. How do you feel about your <i>child</i>? For an outsider like me, it seems that Arc should be near a point were it can be published, is it only a delusion or may we be using Arc, say, before 2008? | 1 | -1 | null | null | true | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
52,536 | iotal | 2007-09-09T19:56:25 | Even in a Virtual World, 'Stuff' Matters | http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/business/yourmoney/09second.html?ex=1346990400&en=c3fcef9948756a08&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,538 | iotal | 2007-09-09T19:59:26 | ICANN CEO: Virtual Worlds Are The Future Of Global Commerce | http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/08/virtual-worlds-are-the-future-of-global-commerce-icann-ceo/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | no_error | Virtual Worlds Are The Future Of Global Commerce: ICANN CEO | TechCrunch | 2007-09-09T03:35:17+00:00 | Contributor | In a wide ranging keynote address at the 2007 Influence Forum, ICANN CEO Paul Twomey told the audience that virtual worlds are the future of global commerce.
Twomey used The Sims Online as an example of the sort of interface all companies in the future will be using, in fields including retail, client services, B2B and advertising. Twomey cited the interface behind Google Earth as another example of a “game-like interface” that has been put to real world use. Twomey said that geolocation services would also play an important role in the virtual internet, suggesting that the way we will interact within next generation virtual internet services would have a strong geographical focus.
It’s interesting that the head of the body that controls the internet believes that the world of tomorrow is virtual; Twomey didn’t suggest that it may happen, he stated that it would be as a fact. Virtual worlds such as Second Life may not be the exact model used in the future, but there is little doubt that if Twomey is correct they are certainly heading in the right direction.
(picture credit: BBC)
| 2024-11-08T02:37:19 | en | train |
|
52,539 | iotal | 2007-09-09T20:01:03 | Top Twenty Five Best Selling Video Games Of All Time | http://www.gunslot.com/blog/top-twenty-five-25-best-selling-video-games-all-time | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | http_404 | Page not found – Thunderpick | null | null |
Sorry! It looks like the page you are searching for doesn’t exist.
Try using the main navigation find what you’re looking for, or head back to the homepage.
Go back home
| 2024-11-08T17:19:33 | null | train |
|
52,546 | nostrademons | 2007-09-09T20:12:26 | Remote and home-based workers report higher satisfaction | http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/remote-home-based-workers-report-higher/story.aspx?guid=%7BD9D2ACAE%2DA892%2D4364%2DB2F4%2DB93171B6F91B%7D | 9 | 1 | [
52782
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,547 | terpua | 2007-09-09T20:22:28 | Admish Finds the Colleges Fit for You | null | http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/09/08/admish-finds-the-colleges-fit-for-you/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,554 | estherschindler | 2007-09-09T21:05:47 | Seven Wonders of the IT World | null | http://www.cio.com/article/135700/Seven_Wonders_of_the_IT_World | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,561 | null | 2007-09-09T22:20:48 | null | null | null | null | null | [
52572
] | [
"true"
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,579 | aaronpowell | 2007-09-09T23:26:20 | Entrepreneurs: Never Forget, Distribution is King | http://m3moore.wordpress.com/2007/09/09/entrepreneurs-never-forget-distribution-is-king/ | 9 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,582 | erzen | 2007-09-09T23:37:31 | Erlang for Python programmers: Part I | null | http://ruslanspivak.com/2007/09/09/erlang-for-python-programmers-part-i/ | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | http_404 | 404 Not Found | null | null |
nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu)
| 2024-11-08T11:27:09 | null | train |
52,585 | nickb | 2007-09-09T23:42:45 | Thruster May Shorten Mars Trip From Six Months to a Week - Hacked From Off The Shelf Components! | null | http://www.photonics.com/content/news/2007/September/7/88894.aspx | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,589 | nickb | 2007-09-09T23:51:38 | How to Defeat Comment Spam | null | http://www.baekdal.com/articles/Technology/comment-spam/ | 16 | 2 | [
52764,
52773
] | null | null | bot_blocked | Attention Required! | Cloudflare | null | null |
Why have I been blocked?
This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.
What can I do to resolve this?
You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page.
| 2024-11-08T07:53:53 | null | train |
52,590 | nickb | 2007-09-09T23:55:20 | What is OpenID for? (Heavy criticism of OpenID) | null | http://srmsblog.burtongroup.com/2007/09/what-is-openid-.html | 12 | 1 | [
52792
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,592 | nickb | 2007-09-09T23:55:39 | The problem(s) with OpenID (excellent criticism of OpenID) | http://www.idcorner.org/?p=161 | 19 | 9 | [
52625,
52703,
52879,
52730
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,594 | nickb | 2007-09-09T23:57:42 | Web, AJAX slammed for deficiencies - JSON founder slams: security holes, difficult programming | null | http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/09/07/crockford-ajax_1.html | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,598 | nickb | 2007-09-09T23:58:28 | Thinking Parallel: How-to Split a Problem into Tasks | null | http://www.thinkingparallel.com/2007/09/06/how-to-split-a-problem-into-tasks/ | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,600 | bootload | 2007-09-09T23:59:40 | Javascript Best Practices | http://www.javascripttoolbox.com/bestpractices/ | 2 | 1 | [
53015
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,616 | joshwa | 2007-09-10T00:39:58 | Will Weakening Economy KO Web Startups? | null | http://gigaom.com/2007/09/09/will-weak-economy-ko-web-startups/ | 5 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,624 | transburgh | 2007-09-10T01:04:30 | Camera Flipping at Justin.TV | null | http://www.centernetworks.com/camera-flipping-at-justin.tv | 6 | 11 | [
52630,
52746,
52817,
52644,
52727
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,645 | donna | 2007-09-10T02:03:07 | Ajax Startup Launches Web Desktop Linked To Gmail | http://www.intelligententerprise.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=3QWZOBMEGCVGOQSNDLRCKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=201804435 | 6 | 11 | [
52679,
52671,
52734,
52706,
52705,
52759,
52651
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,648 | tojileon | 2007-09-10T02:10:25 | Another Look at Prime Numbers | null | http://betterexplained.com/articles/another-look-at-prime-numbers/ | 9 | 0 | null | null | null | no_error | Another Look at Prime Numbers – BetterExplained | null | null |
Primes are numeric celebrities: they're used in movies, security codes, puzzles, and are even the subject of forlorn looks from university professors.
But mathematicians delight in finding the first 20 billion primes, rather than giving simple examples of why primes are useful and how they relate to what we know. Somebody else can discover the largest prime -- today let's share intuitive insights about why primes rock:
Primes are building blocks of all numbers. And just like in chemistry, knowing the chemical structure of a material helps understand and predict its properties.
Primes have special properties like being difficult to determine (yes, even being difficult can be a positive trait). These properties have applications in cryptography, cycles, and seeing how other numbers multiply together.
So what are prime numbers again?
A basic tenet of math is that any number can be written as the multiplication of primes. For example:
9 = 3 * 3 = 32
12 = 2 * 2 * 3 = 22 3
100 = 4 * 25 = 2 * 2 * 5 * 5 = 22 52
And primes are numbers that can't be divided further, like 3, 5, 7, or 23. Even the number 2 is prime, if you think about it. And the number 1?
Well, 1 is special and isn't considered prime, since things get crazy because 1 = 1 * 1 * 1... and so on. Even mathematicians take shortcuts sometimes, and leave 1 out of the discussion.
Rewriting a number into primes is called prime decomposition, math speak for "find the factors". Primes seem simple, right?
Well, not really. It turns out that
Primes are infinite and we'll never run out (see proof).
Primes don't have a pattern we can decipher
Primes show up in strange places, like quantum mechanics
Prime decomposition is hard. So far, trial-and-error is the best way to break a number into primes. And that's slow.
God, nature, or the flying spaghetti monster -- whatever determined the primes, it made a whole lot of 'em and distributed them in a quirky way.
Analogy: Prime Numbers and Chemical Formulas
Prime numbers are like atoms. We can rewrite any number into a "chemical formula" that shows its parts. In chemistry, we can say a water molecule is really H20:
Water = H20 = two hydrogens and one oxygen
And for a number, we can break it into primes
12 = 2 * 2 * 3 = 22 3 = two "2s" and one "3"
Neat relationship, right? In chemistry the "exponent" happens to go underneath -- I'd really prefer exponents above, but the American Chemical Society hasn't replied to my letters.
Why is this interesting? Well, when chemists arranged their basic elements into the periodic table, new insights emerged:
New elements were predicted by the gaps in the table
Elements in the same row or column shared certain properties
Trends (like increasing reactivity) emerged as you moved around the table
Not bad for reorganizing existing data, eh? Similarly, we can imagine putting the primes (numerical "elements") into a table. But there's a problem.
Nobody knows what the table looks like! Primes are infinite and although we've tried for centuries to find a pattern, we can't. We have no idea where the gaps are or when the next prime is coming. (That's not quite true -- there's interesting hypotheses and conjectures, but the riddle is not solved).
But we won't cry about it, breaking our pencil and sobbing home. You and I are going to make use of the primes even though we don't know every detail.
Organic Chemistry and Functional Groups
I'm no chemistry expert, but I can see a relationship to the primes. Chemical elements have properties based on their location in the periodic table of the elements:
Atoms in group 8A (Neon, Argon) are the noble gases. They don't react and won't blow up in your face.
Atoms in group 4A (Carbon, Silicon) bond well. They're great building blocks for other elements.
Atoms in group 1 (Sodium, Potassium, etc.) are very reactive. Drop 'em in water and see them explode.
And in organic chemistry there's an idea of a functional group: several atoms can determine the class of the entire molecule. For example:
Alcohols are a certain carbon-hydrogen chain with an OH group at the end.
Methanol, ethanol, and other alcohols share similar properties because of this OH functional group.
Those are the basics, if I didn't mess it up. Now let's see what happens when we treat numbers like chemicals.
First Example: Guessing Evenness
In general, an organic chemical contains carbon (not quite, but it's a good starting point). No matter what elements you mix together, if you never add any carbon then you can't create an organic compound.
"Evenness" works the same way. A number is even if it has a 2 in its prime decomposition -- i.e., 2 was used to make the number. There could be a single 2 or fifty; if you have a single 2, you are even, and that's that. If you don't have a 2, you're odd.
Now, remember those math questions that ask how odd and even numbers multiply?
Even times odd is ... (even or odd?)
Even times even is ... (even or odd?)
Odd times odd is ... (even or odd?)
How would you solve this? Guess? Try a few examples? ("Let's see, 3 times 2 is.. 6, but 3 times 3 is 9... so...").
Here's one way to think about it. Multiplication is combining the "prime formulas" for the numbers. Since even numbers contain a "2" somewhere, we can guess that:
Even times odd is even. We started with a 2. It doesn't matter what else we put in.
Even times even is even. We started with a 2 and put in another for good measure.
Odd times odd is odd. We never put in a 2 the whole time, so we stay odd.
Pretty cool, eh? And since 2 is prime, we know we can't "manufacture" a 2 by combining other numbers together.
Thank you prime chemistry, for giving us another way to think about this problem. Now you can even answer questions like this:
What's odd * odd * odd * odd * even?
It's even, since we mixed in a 2 at the end.
Another Example: Ending with 0
I've read your mind: you want another chemical example, this time with functional groups.
Suppose a number has a "2*5" functional group -- it has one or more 2s and one or more 5s. For example:
10 = 2 * 5
40 = 2 * 2 * 2 * 5
90 = 3 * 3 * 2 * 5
Notice a pattern? If a number has a 2 * 5 "functional group", it ends in 0.
Why? Well, 2 * 5 = 10. So having 2 * 2 * 2 * 5 is really like having (2 * 2) * 10. Any whole number multiplied by 10 ends in 0. In general,
(some other primes) * (2 * 5) = a number ending in 0
So just by looking at the "prime formula" you can determine that the number ends with a 0. You never had to do the multiplication out.
And Another Example: Sum of Digits
What's that? You want another example with functional groups? If you insist.
Let's think about numbers with the "3*3" functional group. A number could have 400 threes, but as long as there's at least 2 we're interested. If a number has (3*3) it means
It is divisible by 9
The sum of the digits is divisible by 9 (we can prove this later -- take my word for now).
Here's an example:
18 = 2 * 3 * 3. It has the (3*3) functional group. The sum of the digits is 1 + 8 = 9, which is divisible by 9.
Take a strange number like 31 * 3 * 3 = 279. It has a (3*3) functional group, and the sum of digits is 2 + 7 + 9 = 18. 18 is divisible by 9, so the property holds.
Again, this is pretty cool. We know something about the sum of digits just by finding a certain functional group in the prime decomposition of the number.
Primes in the Real World
Primes have properties that come in useful.
1. Large numbers are hard to factor. We essentially resort to trial-and-error when doing prime decomposition: one method is to keep trying to divide it by other numbers, up to its square root. The fact that primes and prime decompositions are "secret" can be a good thing for cryptography -- we'll get into this later.
2. Primes don't play well with other numbers. Prime numbers don't "overlap" with the regular numbers: they intersect at the last possible moment. For example, 4 and 6 "overlap" at 12, which is pretty early. Their first "required" overlap is at 4 * 6 = 24.
Primes, however, intersect at the last possible moment. 5 and 7, for example, only coincide at 35 (5*7). There's no intermediate value where they both show up.
You'd think a lack of rhythm would be a bad thing, but in nature it can be an advantage.
The cicada insect sprouts from the ground every 13 or 17 years. This means it has a smaller chance of "overlapping" with a predator's cycle, which could be at a more common 2 or 4-year cycle.
3. Primes are prime everywhere.
The movie "Contact" used primes as a universally understood sequence. It's a non-trivial sequence (2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13) that would be hard to generate by accident (1, 0, 1, 0 could be made by a swinging pendulum, for example).
And prime numbers are prime in any number system. "1/3" is only a repeating fraction in base 10 (.33333), and you could even argue that pi (3.14159...) is not irrational in base "pi". But everyone can agree that certain numbers are prime and can't be divided. You can even transmit primes in a unary number system that lacks a decimal point:
II
III
IIIII
IIIIIII
So, primes are an infinite, non-repeating, universally-understood sequence, and a good choice for transmitting a message.
Conclusion
Don't hate the primes because they're different -- see how their properties can be useful. "Not fitting in" is a great if it means you don't overlap with a predator, right? Being hard to factor is great if you're making a secret message, right? For a long time primes were considered a purely theoretical curiosity, but lo and behold, we've found situations where they apply.
And that's a large part of math, in my opinion: seeing how strange properties can be useful or relate to the real-world. Math gives us rules, often for games we don't yet play. Our job is to find situations where we want to follow those rules.
There's much more I'd like to say in upcoming posts. If you want to dive into primes, check out Music of the primes which is a decent introduction to the issue of the primes, and motivated me to think about this topic.
Other Posts In This Series
Techniques for Adding the Numbers 1 to 100
Rethinking Arithmetic: A Visual Guide
Quick Insight: Intuitive Meaning of Division
Quick Insight: Subtracting Negative Numbers
Surprising Patterns in the Square Numbers (1, 4, 9, 16…)
Fun With Modular Arithmetic
Learning How to Count (Avoiding The Fencepost Problem)
A Quirky Introduction To Number Systems
Another Look at Prime Numbers
Intuition For The Golden Ratio
Different Interpretations for the Number Zero
| 2024-11-07T23:16:28 | en | train |
52,662 | amichail | 2007-09-10T02:41:06 | Why Vote When You Can Bet? Slate's guide to all the political markets. | http://specials.slate.com/futures/2008/ | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,670 | transburgh | 2007-09-10T03:02:41 | TechCrunch40 Updates - Scoble Out?, Almost Sold Out, Big Announcement | null | http://www.centernetworks.com/techcrunch40-updates | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,673 | nickb | 2007-09-10T03:18:18 | JavaScript frameworks performances: Prototype vs jQuery | null | http://www.studio-cdd.com:8080/haineault/blog/15/ | 1 | 1 | [
52740
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,682 | mmpcse | 2007-09-10T03:47:22 | Secret of Apple Inc. Marketing: by ex Apple Marketing Executive A | null | http://hitechstartups.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/secret-of-apple-inc-marketing-by-ex-apple-marketing-executive/ | 1 | -1 | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,684 | vlad | 2007-09-10T03:52:25 | Work or Stay at Home? Save Money By Not Having a Job | http://feeds.fool.com/~r/usmf/foolwatch/~3/153831520/work-or-stay-at-home.aspx | 2 | 1 | [
52685
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,696 | PStamatiou | 2007-09-10T04:52:47 | Why I'm Enthused About Startup Weekend | http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/09/10/why-im-enthused-about-startup-weekend/ | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,711 | graham-miln | 2007-09-10T07:07:50 | Microsoft and LISP?: Fun street sign in Casablanca | Saw this fun street sign in Casablanca and thought of ycombinator. Developer humour is rarely appreciated by those immediately around you! | http://www.dssw.co.uk/blog/2007/09/10/l'isp-est-une-academy-microsoft-pro-casablanca/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,713 | danw | 2007-09-10T07:14:16 | The war between Nokia and Apple | null | http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2007/09/war-between-nokia-and-apple.html | 7 | 1 | [
52720,
52728
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,714 | jpalacio486 | 2007-09-10T07:23:22 | I've had enough of being a mindless drone. | I've submitted my application for Winter 08 funding. <p>I am a 21 year old full time college student/full time employee for a Disney contractor doing tape backups for 12 hours a night. After I get off work at 7am I go directly to school. Not fun at all.<p>My partner and I hope that by submitting this application we've entered a rewarding new chapter in our lives. | 6 | 10 | [
53095,
52847,
52793,
53005,
52819,
52786,
52747,
52761,
52758
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
52,717 | diabloernest | 2007-09-10T07:53:58 | Are there any good mmobile live streaming solution? | I was looking for some live solutions that allow me to transfer a live feed from my mobile to a friends mobile. I could not find any good solution. If anyon e knows abt it, then please do inform. <p>Also, given such a platform, i came up with some interesting use cases, which you might agree as well. I posted it on my blog. <p>Given that you have a framework which can deliver real time video feeds from your phone to anywhere? How would you use it? I'm sure justin's job would be much easier in case it allows him to stream his video on web. | http://jatspeak.com/blog/?p=33 | 1 | 1 | [
52721
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,729 | omarabid | 2007-09-10T09:52:57 | Why people spend money on costly software while they are free | Why people spend money on costly software while they are free: Barcode maker is free and full !
But people don't use it much
Why ?? They buy costly program while this one is free
Must I make it paypable so they use it ? | http://barcodemaker.freehostia.com | 1 | -1 | null | null | true | fetch failed | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T20:35:19 | null | train |
52,745 | davidw | 2007-09-10T11:44:11 | Why PostgreSQL Instead of MySQL: Comparing Reliability and Speed in 2007 | http://www.postgresql.org/docs/techdocs.83 | 33 | 18 | [
52841,
52920,
52787,
53202,
52930,
52834
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,748 | joshwa | 2007-09-10T12:35:39 | A VC: Every Product Is A Platform | http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/09/every-product-i.html | 5 | 1 | [
53034,
52864
] | null | null | no_article | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T11:09:17 | null | train |
|
52,754 | transburgh | 2007-09-10T12:54:01 | Greylock Partners Invests In Stealth Search Engine Cuill | null | http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/10/greylock-partners-invests-in-stealth-search-engine-cuill/ | 3 | 1 | [
52776
] | null | null | Failed after 3 attempts. Last error: Quota exceeded for quota metric 'Generate Content API requests per minute' and limit 'GenerateContent request limit per minute for a region' of service 'generativelanguage.googleapis.com' for consumer 'project_number:854396441450'. | Greylock Partners Invests In Stealth Search Engine Cuill | TechCrunch | 2007-09-10T08:41:35+00:00 | Michael Arrington | We got (at least) one thing wrong when we wrote about super-stealth search startup Cuill last week. We said we believed the company self funded after searching for venture capital. But we now have it from two solid sources that they actually raised a $4 million Series A round from Greylock Partners, with partner David Strohm taking a board seat.
Cuill, which was founded by husband and wife team Tom Costello and Anna Patterson, can supposedly index web pages at 1/10th the cost of Google (a significant competitive advantage) and has claims of relevance improvements over existing search engines. Patterson was until recently the architect of Google’s TeraGoogle, and the team also brought on Russell Power from TeraGoogle as well. The rumor is that they’ve continued to hire senior search experts away from Google, beyond the people listed on the site.
Greylock is behind some of the biggest success stories of the new Internet, including Facebook, Digg, LinkedIn and others. Most of those investments are led by David Sze, however. Strohm only rarely seems to invest in the consumer sector.
| 2024-11-08T08:38:04 | null | train |
52,755 | transburgh | 2007-09-10T12:54:22 | Plastic Dating Cards? This Clearly Isn't Going To Work | http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/09/plastic-dating-cards-this-clearly-isnt-going-to-work/ | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,760 | dawie | 2007-09-10T13:09:05 | How To Bootstrap Your Startup | null | http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_bootstrap_your_startup.php | 8 | 3 | [
52772
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,762 | nreece | 2007-09-10T13:13:57 | Shifting time to conserve energy | http://www.nilkanth.com/archives/2007/09/03/shifting-time-to-conserve-energy/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,763 | catalinist | 2007-09-10T13:17:40 | Introduction to Lua Programming | Description: Lua is a powerful, light-weight programming language designed for extending applications. Coupled with it being relatively fast and having a very lenient license, it has gained a following among game developers for providing a viable scripting interface. It has been used in games such as World of Warcraft and Far Cry, and in applications such as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Snort. | http://www.scratchprojects.com/2007/08/introduction_to_lua_programming_p01.php | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,766 | nreece | 2007-09-10T13:32:34 | Why Joining Existing Projects Always Sucks | http://www.hacknot.info/hacknot/action/showEntry?eid=97 | 16 | 1 | [
53590
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,767 | jsjenkins168 | 2007-09-10T13:32:37 | Apple now considering bidding in the wireless auction | http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2007/tc20070910_014733.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_top+story | 10 | 8 | [
52789,
52775,
52875,
53065
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,768 | pg | 2007-09-10T13:34:52 | Nils Holger Moormann : Bookinist | null | http://www.moormann.de/moebel/sitzmoebel/bookinist/bilder-galerie.html | 3 | 1 | [
52815
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,771 | nreece | 2007-09-10T13:39:30 | Facebook - Fruit Flies for Applications | http://1vc.typepad.com/soaring_on_ridgelift/2007/09/facebook-fruit-.html | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | no_article | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T08:44:46 | null | train |
|
52,774 | null | 2007-09-10T13:42:52 | null | null | null | null | null | null | [
"true"
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,777 | mpfefferle | 2007-09-10T14:02:00 | Nokia, the computer company? | http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2007/05/nokia-computer-company.html | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,779 | luccastera | 2007-09-10T14:18:55 | Vote for applications created during the Rails Rumble 2007 this weekend | null | http://vote.railsrumble.com/ | 5 | 1 | [
52820
] | null | null | fetch failed | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T11:46:41 | null | train |
52,780 | hhm | 2007-09-10T14:19:19 | Guide to writing technical books (blog thread, 7 interesting posts) | http://pragdave.pragprog.com/pragdave/writing_a_book/index.html | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
52,783 | dshah | 2007-09-10T14:33:41 | 88% are Millionaires and 6 More Surprises From Entrepreneurial Survey | null | http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/2230/88-are-Millionaires-and-6-More-Surprises-From-Entrepreneurial-Survey.aspx | 16 | 3 | [
52829
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
52,788 | jnestor | 2007-09-10T15:00:57 | Cool use of mapquest driving directions API | http://www.funandsafedriving.com/ddirections.html | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.