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 2002/5/3-5 [Computer/SW/Languages, Science/GlobalWarming] UID:24687 Activity:high 5/2 Math people: if I have a password generator that doesn't generate any collsions in 1,000,000 runs, is there a way to estimate a lower bound on the size of the space with a certain confidence? \_ yes. Lower bound of 1,000,000. \_ You expect a collision at about \sqrt{n} trials, if there are n elements in your space. See birthday paradox. -chialea \_ What chialea means to say is that, if you trust it to be using reasonably strong random bits (which aren't, for instance, cyclic and loop in a cycle of length 1,000,001), there's good reason to expect the space size to be >=1e12. However, there are many real-world issues that would make this analysis null and void, and to actually get statistical confidence intervals on it, you'd need to assume quite a bit about the world, and then talk to somebody who knows more statistics than I. -alexf \- hola i havent done the math but is there a rule of thumb that says "for n buckets with equal/indep probability, the number of instaces to have say 50% collsions is some f(n)"? withthe birthday problem it's 365 with close enough to equal probability to hit 50% collision chance at 24 or 28 [i forgot the number] ... i am wondering about a rule of thumb like the "rule of 70" on interest rate doubling, or say even stirling formula for n! --psb \_ I found a web page that said it's about 1.2*sqrt(n). Using Stirling's formula and a Taylor series for ln, I get that the constant in front is sqrt(2*ln(2)) which is about 1.1774. Details left to the reader -lewis \_ URLp \_ constants are for sissies \_ Thanks alex, that's indeed what I meant. I blame it all on e190! -chialea
 2002/5/3 [Politics/Domestic] UID:24688 Activity:moderate 5/2 http://www.religioustolerance.org/nat_mott.htm \_ Indeed. For all you who feel like hanging on to the "separation of church and state isn't about 'no prayer' in government," go back and look at who instituted the idea. \_ Yes indeedy! Dead Rich White Men, WASPS all, are trying to take over the country by adding the word "G-d" everywhere! Gadzooks! The end is near! --a real atheist, not an alt.conspiracy fan
 2002/5/3-5 [Science/Physics] UID:24689 Activity:moderate 5/2 hi. does anybody out there know about how physics postdocs do in doctoral programs for finance, accounting, etc? any personal stories, cautionary tales, etc, please write to me, hahnak. thanks in advance \_ hi. \_ if you go from physics to finance with a phd from a name-brand school, no post-doc is necessary, and you certainly don't want to waste your time with some idiotic finance grad program. for reasons that are perhaps a litle odd, there are lots of finance type employers on wall street desperately trying to recruit physics phds all the time. i am a second year grad student in applied physics, and i periodically get solicited by these people even though i am years from graduating. lot's of people seem to go this route, but no one i know personally because it tends to be the particle theorist wannabe loosers, and i'm in condensed matter experiment. from what i've heard, expect to make less than the *real* finance poeple, to work long hours, to hate your boss, and to lead a pointless existence in the most expensive city in the US(nyc). in the most expensive city in the US(nyc). huh. this reply was intended as a troll(although i honestly believe everything i said.) apparently this is the wrong crowd. \_ What part of physics studies is applicable in the financial world? \_ being able to think and create mathematical models. \_ yeah, and also an understanding of the study of random processes.
 2002/5/3 [Reference/Tax] UID:24690 Activity:high 5/3 Anybody know what percentage of the population in Israel do not work for a living and receive welfare checks? I know the religious groups live off the state I'm wondering if there are more people like that. My tax dollars are funding shit like that, and it pisses me off. \_ Your tax dollars are getting porked all over this country and the rest of the planet and you know it. Take the troll elsewhere. \_ How does it feel to be a frustrated, powerless, anonymous ranter?
 2002/5/3-5 [Academia/Berkeley/CSUA] UID:24691 Activity:high 5/3 http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~vance/www/vaxbar.html \_ Ooookay... that was reaaaaallly nerdy. \_ Why doesn't the CSUA have one? The vp needs to get on the ball. \_ I wanted to do this with the old Sequent Balance back in the day. We could have moved Lame in there. (Lame being the old mini-fridge, before it spawned life and had to be cleaned... and was subsequently stolen.) -geordan \_ I don't think it was stolen. I think that after danh's underwear mated in an unholy union with a 6 year old bottle of snapple in the bowels of Lame, someone duct-taped and dumped the fucker. --scotsman \_ Had Snapple®. even been around for 6 years then? --jon \_ Had SnappleM-. even been around for 6 years then? --jon \_ It's quite possible. I had that bottle of Snapple Iced Tea living in my room for what, 2 years when I started college. -geordan
 2002/5/3 [Uncategorized] UID:24692 Activity:nil 5/3 phillip, why is your mail spool no longer world-readable? Have we done something to anger you? Have we forsaken your trust? \_ procmail always resets my mailspool mode. i'll try to fix -Phillip
 2002/5/3-5 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:24693 Activity:moderate 5/2 If you have offer or rejection letters from any graduate schools, I would really appreciate it if you could mail me a copy of the text within the next day or two. I am collecting additional data for a term paper in linguistics. Thanks. -brg \_ Can I trust you that you'll publish your paper? I got a bunch of rejects, I am very depressed. How do I get them to you anonymously? \_ OCR baby! \_ Oral-Clitoral-Rectal baby! Ooh, aah! \_ Post the text on Craigslist, m4m. \_ brg, touch a world writable file in /csua/tmp/rejects so that ppl can just paste it into there (anonymously). \_ brg, you're slow on my reply above, so I am not going to give any to you \_ I already did a paper like this, not for linguistics though. I merely wrote Universities, addressed specific depts and names explaining and asking. All replied, some negatively. \_ reportP
 2002/5/3-5 [Computer/SW/OS/OsX, Computer/SW/OS/Windows] UID:24694 Activity:kinda low 5/3 Anyone know about 4-pin/6-pin Firewire? I wanna get an iPod, but have a Sony Vaio with a 4-pin Firewire port. Should a 4-pin to 6-pin plug be enough to get this to connect? (In addition to any extra software I need to get of course.) - rory \_ Yes. Infact the iPod should come with that adapter. \_ Really? That'd be great if the adapter was even included, but my understanding was that all the macs had the 6-pin ports and Apple not was putting any effort into supporting non-mac usage of the iPod. url? Thanks. \_ I thought that the new iBook had the smaller port, but it turns out I was wrong. Anyway, I asked a friend of mine here at work who has a iPod and he has been using it with his vaio at home with just the 4 pin to 6 pin cable and xpod or some such software. \_ Great! That's just what I wanted to hear... thanks! ... and if you ever find out the exact software he is using, please post or email. I am looking at a couple different programs right now-- some free, some not. \_ The guy at work uses XPlay: http://www.media4.com/products/xplay \_ the only difference between 4- and 6-pin firewire is that 6-pin carries power on the extra two pins. If you have a device that can be powered externally, then you should be able to go from 6- to 4- with no problem.
 2002/5/3-5 [Computer/SW/Database] UID:24695 Activity:nil 5/3 What's up with s/key? soda:~ [104] keyinit error in opening database: Permission denied \_ skey bad, telnet good
 2002/5/3 [Uncategorized] UID:24696 Activity:nil 5/3 Contrary to popular belief, getting your news from Rush Limbaugh does not make you "informed" \_ Who's Rush Limbaugh?
 2002/5/3-5 [Politics/Domestic/Crime] UID:24697 Activity:kinda low 5/3 http://salon.com/news/wire/2002/05/03/commandments/index.html \_ District Judge weighs in on the seperation of Church & State \_ Yeah she ruled the poor babies "endured unwelcome contact" with the 10 commandments. Gosh. I wish I could sue anytime I "endured unwelcome contact" with something. That's a hell of a standard for constitutional law. \_ I wish some teacher would lead each class with a hearty "Hail Satan" just to see you fundies cry bloody murder. \_ And they'd be right to do so and I'd support them in that for what _should_ be obvious reasons. --real atheist
 2002/5/3-6 [Industry/Jobs] UID:24698 Activity:kinda low 5/3 Anyone has any experience with ACE? How was it? \_ If by ACE you mean Doug Schmidt's Toolkit. I've used it on and off over the years. Once you get the hang of ACE it is really easy to write portable scalable programs. Learning ACE can be a pain, esp. if you don't have someone to talk to who already knows how to use it. It is also a bit hard to get a new developer up to speed on ACE. \_ Thanks! Does Schmidt's books (POSA2, ACE and Patterns, ACE and Framework) help in learning it? Are they worth getting? \_ When I started with ACE, these books didn't exist so I can't really say if they will help you. Given what I have seen of Schmidt and co., these books will heavy into c++ and patterns theory, so unless you are *exteremely comfortable* with patterns, they probably won't help you much. One of the reasons I gave up on ACE was because of patterns. \_ Telebears was a big improvement over ACE. \_ ACE forms taught you how to deal with big, govt bureaucracies.
 2002/5/3-5 [Reference/Tax] UID:24699 Activity:high 5/3 If IRS has all the legal access it needs to verify whether or not people cheat on their tax return, why doesn't it eliminate the tax return and simply calculate the tax amount for everyone? Sure it'll need a lot more computer and maybe human power, but the extra tax dollars that it otherwise won't collect will probably more than cover the cost. \_ Do you *really* want the IRS figuring your tax for you? --dim \_ Because you aren't required to pay taxes, only file a correct return, what dim said x10000, and also there's a zillion different life style deductions that they may not be aware of. \_ which of course is a problem in itself. They need to wipe the slate and have no deductions. Deductions don't help anyone, for ex. mortgage deductions just make the prices of houses go up by that much. Ok maybe they help e.g. Enron and rich fuckers. \_ Of course deductions help. If you had any clue about tax law you'd know that mortgage deduction phase out as you make more money. Higher income people (like me and I'm just some slob posting on the motd from work) don't get most of the mortgage deduction and people making only slightly more get none. So the next time you want to go bash the rich please at least have some tiny shred of clue what you're babbling about. \_ Mortgage deductions don't phase out. They aren't phased out for me and I'm "rich." Anyway my point was that if we all get mortgage deductions, it just makes more demand at a given price point therefore net result is that we're just the same only houses cost more. If there was no deduction we'd have the same purchasing power. \_ That is crap. You need a better tax advisor. Income has nothing to do with mortgage deduction. There is a 1M mortgage cap, but it does not phase out. You get all of the interest deduction on your 1M loan no matter how much you make. \- well you know there are laws about smoke detectors ... so why doesnt the govt just install all smoke detectors. obviously it should be up to you how much "optimizing" to do on your tax return. if you read the tax booklet you will notice there is an option to have the irs compute you tax for you. however, they are almost certainly just going to add up you incomes an subtract the std deduction and then figure out the number. --psb
 2002/5/3-5 [Computer/SW/Languages/Java, Computer/SW/Apps/Media, Computer/SW/Security] UID:24700 Activity:nil 5/3 Finally we know who was the first borg, it was Prof. Steve Mann of the University of Toronto: http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i34/34a03101.htm \_ He's saying he had a wearable video display 20 years ago? \_ He's saying he was a freak 20 years ago just like now.
 2002/5/3-5 [Academia/OtherSchools] UID:24701 Activity:very high 5/3 What kind of idiot is MIT prof Stuart Madnick? \_ The best kind. The kind that can be bought. \- yeah if i were an attorney or we could get him to a csua meeting i would ask him "are you stupid or bought off?" --psb \_ Apparently doctoral degrees from MIT can be brought too because he has one. \_ Holding a doctoral degree from MIT does not imply that the holder of that degree is an individual of good character. \_ There are plenty of professional expert witnesses. Most of them don't get busted in such a public case. They needed to prepare him better which is MS's lawyer's fault. He's just your standard say-anything-for-bucks expert. \_ Maybe that's the problem: MS-lawyers teaching an MIT professor about the meaning of "Operating System". And MIT PhD's and MIT Professors are not your "standard say-anything-for-bucks" expert -- they are supposed to have higher ethics. Can you imagine a UC Berkeley prof testifying on the stand like that? We'd run him/her out of Berkeley. \_ You can buy a UCB prof too, but MS didn't want to pay the extra 10% fee. Shame on MIT. \_ ahh... to be young and idealistic.. \_ Why does someone always beat me to it? I was thinking exactly this as I read the naive post above and then BAM! someone else has said it already... sigh. \_ ahh... to be old and slow... \_ You can buy a UCB prof too, but MS didn't want to pay the extra 10% fee. Plus fly them cross country. \_ Since when does a UCB prof cost more? Who the hell has heard of UCB when compared to the blaring bullhorn that is MIT? More like MIT/10 = UCB cost. \_ it's funny how those of you who think so poorly of Cal still have enough "self-respect" to stay at the school. \_ It's not funny. It's called "most bang for the buck". Not all of us are on the Parental Payment Plan and have to go to the best that we can afford, not simply the best. BTW, you called your mom and thanked her for all that easy money lately? You should. She deserves at least a phone call once a week. \_ funny again. mommy didn't pay for me. or daddy. \_ Not all of us *gasp* are smart enough (or had good enough grades/scores) to get into MIT, but still see its superiority (if in nothing else, than at least in reputation). \_ preparing witness != teaching witness. Please report to slashdot for legal education immediately! (yes thats a joke)
2018/10/16 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
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Berkeley CSUA MOTD:2002:May:03 Friday <Thursday, Saturday>