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Comment Re:Duh (Score 1) 311

Saying "it is probably the case that it is [100%] true " is pretty meaningless in computing terms unless you can enumerate what "probably" means in that sentence.

The "probably" in that example was enumerated in the previous part of the sentence that you failed to quote:

whereas "probably true [or 90% chance of being true]" means that "it is probably the case that it is [100%] true

The 90% gives the meaning that reasoning systems that use probabilisitic logic exploit. Whether you think it's meaningless or not though, the fact remains that fuzzy logic deals with degrees of truth, and probabilistic logic deals with probabilities of truth that do not admit of degrees. When a person talks about partial truth, they are appealing to the intuitions that fuzzy logic is founded upon, and when they talk about likely or unlikely truths, they are appealing to the intuitions that probabilistic logic is founded upon. There is no reason that they can't be combined (e.g., something is probably mostly true, which might in one particular case mean I think it's 85% likely (probabilistic logic) that it has truth value between 0.7 and 0.95 (fuzzy logic)), but they are distinct, and "probably" refers to probabilistic logic more than fuzzy logic, which was my original point.

Comment Re:Duh (Score 1) 311

Sounds much more like Probabilistic Logic than fuzzy logic. Fuzzy logic would be "is mostly true [or is 90% true]" (like whether a man who is 6 ft 2 inches "is tall"), whereas "probably true [or 90% chance of being true]" means that "it is probably the case that it is [100%] true (like whether my ten-sided die will roll a number other than 4)". Fuzzy logic admits degrees of truth and isn't talking about probabilities at all, whereas probabilistic logic admits only the standard true or false, and the probabilities refer to our best estimate of how likely it is to be true (that's one interpretation of probability, anyway).

Comment Re:Slashdotter? (Score 1) 103

28.8K MODEM! Waiting to load on a 28.8K MODEM, you say! Bloody hell, you had it easy. We would have loved to have the luxury of waiting, or even having a real modem.

When I was a kid, we had to get up at 1 o clock in the morning, run 7 miles into town and back for no reason at all, and then get down on all fours and push a big wheel around like donkeys all day in order to generate electricity to do our 'web surfing' in the evening. When I say 'web surfing', of course, I mean that our 1 bit per day telegraph receiver would deliver a single bit, yes or no, and if it was yes, our dad would whip us with a cat o' nine tails until we went unconscious, and if it was no, we would get no gruel for the day and have to work in the fields overnight instead of sleeping.

With apologies to to those who really had it hard...

Education

How To Teach a 12-Year-Old To Program? 799

thelordx writes "I've got a much younger brother who I'd like to teach how to program. When I was younger, you'd often start off with something like BASIC or Apple BASIC, maybe move on to Pascal, and eventually get to C and Java. Is something like Pascal still a dominant teaching language? I'd love to get low-level with him, and I firmly believe that C is the best language to eventually learn, but I'm not sure how to get him there. Can anyone recommend a language I can start to teach him that is simple enough to learn quickly, but powerful enough to do interesting things and lead him down a path towards C/C++?"

Comment Re:ask some questions (Score 1) 958

When making the case to the boss that they do need to purchase the software and have licenses and proof, the best strategy is to appeal to his self-interest and his desire to cover his own ass.

Explain that if just one disgruntled former employee wants to take revenge against the company, (s)he can make an anonymous report to the BSA and that the fines can be extremely severe.

No sane manager will want to be potentially held responsible by his superiors for millions of dollars in fines and attorney's fees, based on what probably amounts to at most tens of thousands of dollars.

Comment Re:Scholarpedia? (Score 1) 263

Like I said, it doesn't have a lot of content but much of the content that it does have, like the two articles I noted, is very high quality and authoritative, by experts in the field (i.e., far superior to Wikipedia).

The fields they currently list are astrophysics, computational neuroscience, computational intelligence, dynamical systems, and physics (it looks there is stuff planned for quantum field theory and related: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Category:Quantum_and_Statistical_Field_Theory).

So yeah, if you want to use it as an encyclopedia to search for random things, it is nearly useless. If you want to browse it for high-quality, authoritative articles by experts, it is a useful resource.

Programming

Practical Django Projects 151

Chromodromic writes "Apress's newest Django offering, Practical Django Projects by James Bennett, weighs in lightly at 224 pages of actual tutorial content, but trust me, they're dense pages. Filled with pragmatic examples which directly address the kinds of development issues you will encounter when first starting out with Django, this book makes an important addition to the aspiring Django developer's reference shelf. In particular, the book's emphasis on demonstrating best practices while building complete projects does an excellent job of accelerating an understanding of Django's most powerful features — in a realistic, pragmatic setting — and which a developer will be able to leverage in very short order." Read below for the rest of Greg's review.
Biotech

Key Step In Programmed Cell Death Discovered 80

Investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have discovered a dance of proteins that protects certain cells from undergoing apoptosis, also known as programmed cell death. Understanding the fine points of apoptosis is important to researchers seeking ways to control this process. In a series of experiments, St. Jude researchers found that if any one of three molecules is missing, certain cells lose the ability to protect themselves from apoptosis. A report on this work appears in the advance online publication of Nature.
GNU is Not Unix

RMS Steps Down As Emacs Maintainer 321

sigzero writes "Short but sweet: RMS is stepping down as Emacs Maintainer: 'From: Richard Stallman, Subject: Re: Looking for a new Emacs maintainer or team, Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:57:22 -0500 Stefan and Yidong offered to take over, so I am willing to hand over Emacs development to them."
Technology

Nanotechnology-Powered Wiper-Less Windshield 178

fab writes "Italian car designer Leonardo Fioravanti (who worked for Pininfarina for a number of years) has developed a car prototype without windshield wipers. This amazing technological feat is made possible thanks to the use of 4 layers of glass modified using nanotechnology. The first layer filters the sun and repels the water. The second layer, using 'nano-dust' is able to push dirt to the side. The third layer acts as a sensor that activates the second layer when it detects dirt, while the fourth layer is a conductor of electricity to power this complex mechanism. I haven't been able to find an English article, but there is always a google powered translation of the Italian article."
Space

Milky Way Is Twice the Size We Thought 301

Peter writes to tell us about a research group at the University of Sydney in Australia, who in the middle of some calculation wanted to check the numbers everybody uses for the thickness of our galaxy at the core. Using data available freely on the Internet and analyzing it in a spreadsheet, they discovered in a matter of hours that the Milky Way is 12,000 light years thick, vs. the 6,000 that had been the consensus number for some time.
The Internet

Prototype Software Sniffs Out, Disrupts Botnets 51

coondoggie writes "Earlier this week researchers unveiled a system to identify and eradicate botnets in the wild. While currently only a prototype, Georgia Tech's BotSniffer would use network-based anomaly detection to identify botnet command and control channels in a LAN. The system wouldn't require any prior knowledge of signatures or server addresses. 'The researchers said their prototype, which was presented at the Internet Society's Network and Distributed System Security Symposium this week, is based on the fact that botnets engage in coordinated communication, propagation, and attack and fraudulent activities.'"
Politics

Ron Paul Campaign Answers Slashdot Reader Questions 1011

On January 15th we asked you for tech-oriented questions we could send to the various presidential candidates, and you responded like mad. The candidates were the exact opposite: not a single one answered emails we sent to their "media inquiry" links or email addresses. Slashdot has more readers than all but a handful of major daily papers, so that's kind of strange. Maybe they figure our votes aren't worth much or that hardly any of us vote. In any case, the Ron Paul campaign finally responded, due to some string-pulling by a Slashdot reader who knows some of Ron Paul's Texas campaign people. Perhaps other Slashdot readers -- like you (hint hint) -- can pull a few strings with some of the other campaigns and get them to communicate with us. Use this email address, please. But first, you'll probably want to read the Ron Paul campaign's answers to your questions (below).
Databases

PostgreSQL 8.3 Released 286

jadavis writes "The release of the long-awaited PostgreSQL version 8.3 has been announced. The new feature list includes HOT, which dramatically improves performance for databases with high update activity; asynchronous commit; built-in full text search; large database features such as synchronized scans and reduced storage overhead; built-in SQL/XML support; spread checkpoints; and many more (too many major new features to list here). See the release notes for full details."

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