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Comment Re:There WERE computers involved, indirectly. (Score 1) 170

Indeed, even a rough reading of Tao's blog post shows that previous computer computations are an essential part of the proof:

The first refinement, which is only available in the five primes case, is to take advantage of the numerical verification of the even Goldbach conjecture up to some large (we take , using a verification of Richstein, although there are now much larger values of – as high as – for which the conjecture has been verified). As such, instead of trying to represent an odd number as the sum of five primes, we can represent it as the sum of three odd primes and a natural number between and . This effectively brings us back to the three primes problem, but with the significant additional boost that one can essentially restrict the frequency variable to be of size . In practice, this eliminates all of the major arcs except for the principal arc around . This is a significant simplification, in particular avoiding the need to deal with the prime number theorem in arithmetic progressions (and all the attendant theory of L-functions, Siegel zeroes, etc.). In a similar spirit, by taking advantage of the numerical verification of the Riemann hypothesis up to some height , and using the explicit formula relating the von Mangoldt function with the zeroes of the zeta function, one can safely deal with the principal major arc . For our specific application, we use the value , arising from the verification of the Riemann hypothesis of the first zeroes by van de Lune (unpublished) and Wedeniswki. (Such verifications have since been extended further, the latest being that the first zeroes lie on the line.)

Comment Re:What could be Kermit's most interesting legacy (Score 1) 146

But what I would really appreciate from columbia would be a clear and detailled explanation of what parts or "kind of parts" of kermit-95 and why ? cannot be open sourced ?

Just read TFA and follow links:
Regular Kermit 95 binaries can not be made openly available because they include cryptography functions whose distribution is restricted by United States export law. Kermit 95 binaries that include encryption (SSH, SSL/TLS, and Kerberos) will have to be purchased and licensed, as before. Single copies can be purchased from Amazon.com, E-Academy.com, and other retailers. If the stock of shrinkwrapped copies runs out, Kermit 95 will continue to be available from E-Academy.com in both cryptographic and non-cryptographic (safe for export) versions.

Image

US Grants Home Schooling German Family Political Asylum 1324

A US judge has granted political asylum to a family who said they fled Germany to avoid persecution for home schooling their children. Uwe Romeike and his wife, Hannelore, moved to Tennessee after German authorities fined them for keeping their children out of school and sent police to escort them to classes. Mike Connelly, attorney for the Home School Legal Defence Association, argued the case. He says, "Home schoolers in Germany are a particular social group, which is one of the protected grounds under the asylum law. This judge looked at the evidence, he heard their testimony, and he felt that the way Germany is treating home schoolers is wrong. The rights being violated here are basic human rights."
Communications

Pedro Matias Sets New Texting Record At Mobile World Cup 70

Pedro Matias showed off his mad txtin sklz at this year's Mobile World Cup and managed to set a new record for "fastest, most accurate" texts as determined by the event's corporate owners. "history was made when Portugal's Pedro Matias set the new World's Record for texting by typing a 264-character text in just 1 minute 59 seconds (besting the previous record by 23 seconds). Of course, each Mobile World Cup must have its share of controversy -- in this case, Engadget Mobile's very own Chris Ziegler led a silent protest during the awards ceremony. The group was reportedly upset over the use of QWERTY phones (the LG enV3 in this case) to break the record."
Earth

Minnesota Introduces World's First Carbon Tariff 303

hollywoodb writes "The first carbon tax to reduce the greenhouse gases from imports comes not between two nations, but between two states. Minnesota has passed a measure to stop carbon at its border with North Dakota. To encourage the switch to clean, renewable energy, Minnesota plans to add a carbon fee of between $4 and $34 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions to the cost of coal-fired electricity, to begin in 2012 ... Minnesota has been generally pushing for cleaner power within its borders, but the utility companies that operate in MN have, over the past decades, sited a lot of coal power plants on the relatively cheap and open land of North Dakota, which is preparing a legal battle against Minnesota over the tariff."
Media

Lack of Manpower May Kill VLC For Mac 398

plasmacutter writes "The Video Lan dev team has recently come forward with a notice that the number of active developers for the project's MacOS X releases has dropped to zero, prompting a halt in the release schedule. There is now a disturbing possibility that support for Mac will be dropped as of 1.1.0. As the most versatile and user-friendly solution for bridging the video compatibility gap between OS X and windows, this will be a terrible loss for the Mac community. There is still hope, however, if the right volunteers come forward."
Debian

FreeNAS Switching From FreeBSD To Debian Linux 206

dnaumov writes "FreeNAS, a popular, free NAS solution, is moving away from using FreeBSD as its underlying core OS and switching to Debian Linux. Version 0.8 of FreeNAS as well as all further releases are going to be based on Linux, while the FreeBSD-based 0.7 branch of FreeNAS is going into maintenance-only mode, according to main developer Volker Theile. A discussion about the switch, including comments from the developers, can be found on the FreeNAS SourceForge discussion forum. Some users applaud the change, which promises improved hardware compatibility, while others voice concerns regarding the future of their existing setups and lack of ZFS support in Linux."

Comment Re:Read the Bible. (Score 1) 459

most notably the catholic church and their instance that only the Pope can talk to God, which is in direct contradiction to the primary message of pretty much every book of the Bible

Since you clearly have no idea whatsoever about what the catholic church is and is not: the difference with some other denomination does not consist in the fact that only one person talks on God's cell phone each Sunday morning rather than each pastor rather than any believer that can manage to dial His number.

they also asserted in the past that only a properly educated person should be allowed to read the Bible

It's rather more on allowing any nutcase to form and teach his personal opinion on a huge book written in a variety of very ancient language, by people from a very different culture (one could argue about Paul, but everyone else was definitively a Jew), missing all vowels and with huge chunks corrupted beyond any hope (I know, some people say that KJ was God inspired; that belongs to my definition of nutcase). Catholics opted for letting only experts deal with the Bible; Lutherans opted for educating people (clearly the wiser thing to do, in the long run); some others opted for the nutcases. Thanks to God most of them gathered in the USA.

Data Storage

GE Introduces 500GB Holographic Disks 370

bheer writes "According to the NYTimes, at a conference next month, GE will debut their new holographic storage breakthrough — 500GB disks that will cost 10 cents a GB to produce at launch. GE will first focus on selling the technology to commercial markets like movie studios and hospitals, but selling to the broader corporate and consumer market is the larger goal."

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