Eric Nylund's Signal to Noise http://www.amazon.com/Signal-Noise-Eric-S-Nylund/dp/0380792923 explores a lot of the same kinds of mathematical concepts as Cryptonomicon, but in a Space Opera Thriller. The sequel is quite good as well.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to say *anything* about this story without spoiling it, so I'll just leave it as a bare recommendation.

This is a really bad misunderstanding of how fractional reserve banking works. Banks *don't* loan money that they don't have, they can only loan out of their reserves.

The reason money gets multiplied is that money moves so fast in the system that the million dollars coming in today can also go out today. The money a bank loans out today is deposited tomorrow (somewhere), and that bank now can reloan out 90% of the $1 million hypothetical loan, and all of this happens so fast that it *looks* from the outside like they just create money

Fractional reserve banking is entirely feasible conducted purely with real gold, though would multiple money slightly more slowly due to the physical transfer times of the gold. Which is why gold-based currencies never actually use the physical gold as a counter any more (technologically advanced counterfeiting making currency validation almost impossible at any reasonable speed, aside).

Indeed, we know this, because FRB was *originally* invented by goldsmiths accepting deposits of physical gold as currency and loaning it out (though, for the above reasons, usually as receipts for delivery of gold rather than physical gold).

It's not really the math itself that you use in programming. It's the mental processes that you learn learning math that are *also* useful in learning (and doing) programming.

I won't go so far as to say that anyone who hasn't done advanced math *can't* be a good programmer, but I will say unequivocally that it's highly unlikely.

But more importantly, being a really good programmer absolutely requires that you be *curious* about algorithms. It's mind-boggling to me that anyone sufficiently curious about algorithms to be a good programmer would even *ask* the question "do I need all this math?". Who cares? Why don't you *want* to learn it?!?!? Hint: "Just for the joy of learning it" is the right answer.

The rubber hose cryptanalysis won't be able to get you to *tell* them the password, but I see no reason why they couldn't get you to *reveal* it by playing the game.

Since it's subconscious, you won't even know that you're revealing it.

The basic problem with this is that cops' job is to collect evidence of crimes and arrest those they think are responsible. It's not the public's job to do this.

When they release their evidence, they taint it for any future court proceeding. Even if it were allowed, it probably shouldn't be in general because the public (including the jury) can be presumed to have seen it.

Of course, if they aren't planning to use it for evidence, it's technically ok for them to release it (though there are the same concerns about everyone's privacy as when the public releases it), but it doesn't seem like a good idea...

Because it sends the message that there is no chance that they will be prosecuted for any misconduct regardless (otherwise this would be tainted evidence for *their* trials).

I really wish that people who used this analogy would go look up the case where it was created.

You know, the one in which publishing a communist newsletter was deemed equivalent to shouting fire in a crowded theater.

It's very dangerous to create slippery slopes, and pointless when there are adequate ways to deal with the problem already.

So, in this day of actuators and microcontrollers, how would you actually do this without getting rid of *all* patents?

It's become trivially easy to implement *any* part of any mechanism in software.

It's easy to make platitudes about this stuff... actually coming up with a rigorous legal definition that would rule out the things you like while still allowing the "good" patents is really hard, if not impossible.

Of course, perhaps all patents have outlived their usefulness... but that's a different discussion.

Readily apparent to one's intuition.

The intuition of a person that has taken (and paid attention to) college-level courses is *of course* more efficient at comprehending things that are the topics of the courses.

Perhaps you were thinking of common sense?

The vast majority of people have *crappy* intuitions.

Proof that reddit is faster than Slashdot, I suppose...

I still say it should be "Santorum squeezed out after he repeatedly comes in number two".

Yes, that's cute, but the differences are *far* more than just the hybrid system. The $16k Civic has a manual transmission, a different body style, no Bluetooth, no auto-up windows, no power locks, no cruise control, a much less sophisticated information cluster, and it doesn't even come with a *radio* or *air conditioning* standard.

In order to get anywhere close to the same car minus the hybrid system, you have to go up to the EX level, which starts at $20,655.

The hybrid system itself, therefore, is about a $3500 premium.

Now, of course, you may not *want* all those extra features (though most people want most of them)... and if so, then the Civic Hybrid model isn't for you... but it's not because a hybrid costs 50% more for 13% extra mileage. It's because of marketing.

It's mostly used as a counterargument to the apologist claim that the bible contains math secrets that weren't known when it was written (which is absurd on the face of it, in both directions, of course).

However, that said, just to play the Devil's Advocate (seeing as how the devil is the most likely character in the Bible story to have inspired its writers to create such a libelous depiction of the main character)...

An even better guess than crude "rounding" is that it already says the right thing if you read it correctly. 10 cubits from from "brim to brim" might easily mean the outside diameter of the container, and the circumference may reasonably be considered to be encompassing the *sea* contained therein (i.e. the inside circumference).

As the thickness is a "handsbreadth", which in Egyptian measure was ~.2 cubits. Twice that is .4 cubits, so the diameter of the encompassed sea would be 9.6 cubits, which, when multiplied by pi implies a circumference of 30.16 cubits. This is well within any reasonable margin of error.

To be fair, a large number of laws exist because of corporations and individuals attempting to find loopholes around the "simple" laws.

Humans are evolved to find loopholes. It's what we do. If you're going to try to have well-defined rules we're all supposed to follow, they're either going to be worse than useless or they're going to be complex.

The only alternative is to have a judicial system with judges that have *way* more power to simply decide what is reasonable and apply the simple laws how the judge sees fit. We do have that to a fairly large degree, which is the only reason our laws get away with being even as minimally simple as they are. The worry is that moving too far in that direction removes valuable checks and balances.

The typical way this works is that they charge you with *more* than they think you're guilty of to get you to plea bargain.

So it is entirely possible for a guilty person to get the punishment they deserve, because they're being threatened with more than they deserve.

The real problem is that there's no way to know how often this happens.

Instead of anecdotal evidence, how about if one of these studies actually studies the problem in situ to *see* if people behave differently between drinking and texting/calling/talking to a passenger while driving?

Until then, it's pretty much meaningless noise.

It's pretty easy to disprove this hypothesis, though. If you look at the causes of fatal accidents, you'd find that it's quite rare for an accident to be linked to texting or calling, *relative* to being related to drinking.

If we see 10,000 deaths per year attributable to texting/calling *then* we can say that these activities are "just as dangerous". Until then, it's little more than speculation and hyperbole.

But speaking of anecdotal evidence, I see a *lot* more people driving while calling than driving while drunk (to the degree necessary to show an evident impairment in both cases, just to compare apples to apples). Yet alcohol related injuries and deaths are far more common.

Something doesn't add up. I don't know what it is, but it doesn't add up.

I suppose that an exclusive license with the right to sublicense would be right out then, too? Because the difference that makes no difference is no difference.

The purpose of patents is not to allow people to productize their own ideas, it's to incentivize people to a) invent, and b) not try to hide their invention so that it becomes available to all, eventually.

One way to incentivize inventors is to allow them to sell their patents.