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A Blog With No Name

It's good to be back in the game

Posts tagged with "rnd"

DST, again

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I really don't like DST, and have already written about my arguments against it.

I would just add that we should be careful of stuff that sound so similar to STD.

Tapping into your keyboard

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This just sounds freaky. Great fuel for the paranoid mind.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8147534.stm

Common Sense often lies

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'Common Sense' don't always make sense. On cracked.com there is a good article about the 5 most common ways it lies to us everyday. It starts with reminding us that Albert Einstein defined common sense as a collection of prejudices acquired by the age of 18.

I'm going to list these five major logic fallacies in thinking in short here, and you can go and read in more detail at the original article.

* The Historian's Fallacy
This is when we look at past errors and think how people were stupid when making them, not trying to see it from their point of view, and forgetting they didn't know what we know now. Like thinking how totally and obviously stupid it was to sail the Titanic north and causing the sinking.

* The Nirvana Fallacy
Thinking how something is not worth doing if you can't do it perfect. Like why would you feed a homeless person when it won't fix poverty.

* The Appeal to Probability
Misinterpreting probability theories in a fuzzy way, like "if something can happen, it probably will". For example buying lottery tickets and justifying it with "somebody's got to win, why wouldn't it be me?".

* The Regression Fallacy
Seeing patterns where there are none. Thinking that A is cause of B, just because it happened at the same time. This is the reason for most of the superstitious beliefs.

* Special Pleading
Making an exception out a general rule without any justification except that it suits our needs at the moment. The interesting thing about this one is that we apply it to itself. We may allow ourselves to do it, but when other people do it we say it's wrong.

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I picked up this article a few months ago from Ze's blog, and I thought it was interesting enough to share, so I finaly did :smile:

DST, how I despise thee

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I just can't stand Daylight Saving Time. I guess it seemed like a good idea, and it still has a few arguments that are positive about it, but most of them have studies that show contradictory results.

My main argument against it is that there are a lot of clocks in the world. Even in the same time zone you have problems with synchronizing all of them. Why do we need to go around the house and move a bunch of clocks? And of course there is always at least one we forget that will make us panic about the time in a few days when we look at it.
In different parts of the world there are different rules on what date do we change the clocks and even at what time of the day.
In this day of global communications why do we need this complication? Why do we create a day with 23 and a day with 25 hours?
For an hour of sunlight in the sumer afternoon? I don't think it's worth all the hustle.

I believe that this argument alone should be enough to dispose of this silly thing.

Rare are the posts

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There were no posts on the blog in the whole of December, and it is already half of January. A pity, since in 2008 there were at least two posts per month, sometimes more... Ah well it was a busy time, filled with unexpected stuff and I am not sure when there will be more time to write something. I don't have time to read other blogs either.

Now to put something interesting into this post, there is something that I wanted to share from the moment I saw it:

It is an illustration by Paul Kidby that can be found in the book "The Last Hero" by Terry Pratchett. On the left is Cohen the Barbarian (whom you could recognize if you seen "The Colour Of Magic" movie), and on the right are the Discworld gods.

Hug a developer

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This was posted on our faculty portal, and it's kinda cute, and kinda sad.



It is the thing you see so often in "Dilbert". But then again if you haven't ever read Dilbert, or have, but don't like it, you should still like this video.
The thing presented is a problem in modern society, that need so much software created. But I believe things are going for the better, there are many big companies that are doing it right (Opera of course among them :D ), and others are getting some ideas.
When will people learn that a manager also need to be very good in the thing he manages?

Nokia bluetooth problems

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Nokia PC suite (if you don't know) is a free software that allows you to nicely access the phone, contacts, messages and do a whole lot of things easily.
It worked very nicely with my Blue Soleil Bluetooth.

When I started it last time, it asked if I would like to upgrade, the new version has this and that, and I said yeah why not. And since then it does not detect the existence of my bluetooth device. The device itself works perfect with the phone as it did before. But PC suite says there is no usable bluetooth. In the conection options it offers some kind of Microsoft bluetooth, which as far as I understood from various topics, is somehow separate, and I should see another entry for Blue Soleil.

Searching online showed that a whole lot of people shared my problem. It doesn't matter what versions are involved, an upgrade can mess up your connection. They recomend uninstalling pc suite, then geting an additional registry cleaner from nokia (why do I need additional cleaning I wonder?), and then trying to reinstall. That could work. But it didn't. They also mention reinstaling the device, which also didn't work for me.

I am giving up for now since I lost enough time and I didn't use it much anyway. I even have the option to use it on another pc.
But if anyone uses the pc suite and reads this, don't upgrade - it's a big risk it seems.

Ice Armor

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Oblivion is one of my favorite games, though I haven't played it for a while now. But when I played, at the later levels I wore a custom made ice armor, crafted by my brother. The main thing about it was the looks, we didn't want to create an overpowering super armor, so it was in level with the best you can find around, and wasn't enchanted. Of course I enchanted some parts of it as I progressed thru the game.

You can see a picture here, though it is pretty shiney.
http://my.opera.com/DarkSunsGlare/albums/showpic.dml?album=546943&picture=7762658

Daemon

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A while ago, we played a bit on the Golden Compass movie site and found our daemons (thru a personality test)... anyway I remebered that now, so I am posting it up. I haven't put it in the post intro so that it don't load everytime anyone opens the blog...

Read more...

Algorithms and modern science

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stumbling around some convex polyedra algorithms, I was looking for Chazelle's "onnion peeling" algorithm. I didn't really find the algorithm, but the creator's web page, and a very interesting article about algorithms and their posible influences on modern science.

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~chazelle/pubs/algorithm.html

the article is filled with great humour combined with a lot of very illustrative explanations. it is a bit lengthy, but I believe it is a worth read if you are at least a bit into algorithms and science.

my favourite two parts are:

Hash table? Hmm, I know what you're thinking: Algorithmistas dig hash tables; they're down for PCP; they crack codes; they get bent out of shape by morphin'; they swear by quicksnort (or whatever it's called). Coincidence? Computer scientists will say yes, but what else are they supposed to say?


and

To this day, only two methods have been scientifically validated. One of them is the infamous “Kitty Flop.” Strap buttered toast to the back of a cat and drop the animal from a PETA-approved height: if the butter hits the ground, record a 1; else a 0. For more bits, repeat. Randomness results from the tension between Murphy's law and the feline penchant for landing on one's feet. The other method is the classical “Coriolis Flush.” This time, go to the equator and flush the toilet: if the water whirls clockwise, your random bit is a 1; else it's a 0.



although there is a lot more where that came from :wink:
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