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Submission + - A Reverse Engineer's Map of Standard Math Definitions

Submitted by acz
acz writes: I put up an experimental math manual that tries to explain why standard definitions appear, using a simple lens: Start with a space of candidates, apply constraints, and treat what remains as the definition or theorem you end up using.

It’s not claiming math from nothing. It’s explicitly regime-declared: it follows the classical branch and marks where that branch is a choice (rather than a contradiction forcing it). The goal is traceability: you can see which ideas are introduced because something broke, and you can see common failure modes instead of just final results.

Comment Who cares? (Score 1) 93

by acz (#63703966) Attached to: 70% of Russian Gamers Are Pirates Following Western Publisher Exodus

Why on earth is this news? Who cares about a decline in Russian gaming profits? Aside from the gaming tycoons, this news barely registers in the wider context of the world. Why get tangled up in a trivial drama of digital pirates and profiteers? In the grand scheme, the profit margins of game publishers aren't significant. Let's focus on the real issues instead.

Comment Wyze System Maintenance (Score 1) 69

by acz (#63274549) Attached to: Wyze Security Cameras Will Go Offline Tonight For Two Hours

My thoughts upon reading of the Wyze system maintenance and its impact on security features were not unlike the feeling that grips one during the nights of the Purge. A sense of vulnerability and exposure, as the only shelter from the dangers of the world is suddenly stripped away.

It is disconcerting to consider the idea that the professional security customers have paid for and rely on can be disabled for something as prosaic as "maintenance." The lack of notice given, with only a narrow window in which to make alternative arrangements, only heightens the sense of uncertainty.

Still, there is a strange allure to the idea of the Wyze system going offline. An opportunity to test the limits of our fortifications, to see if they hold up against the night. But in this particular instance, I will likely be seeking other means of protection, just to be safe.

With regards,
Anthony Zboralski

Comment David Blaine's Perfluorocarbons Enema (Score 1) 74

by acz (#61387992) Attached to: Mammals Can Breathe Through Their Intestines

I wouldn't be surprised that's how he held his breath for 17 minutes. You can even cool the perfluorocarbons to cause hypothermia. "In sedated and paralyzed mammals, acute uncomplicated 0.5- to 3-h hypothermia decreases the global cerebral metabolic rate for glucose (CMR(glc)) and oxygen (CMRo(2)) but maintains a slightly better energy level, which indicates that ATP breakdown is reduced more than its synthesis."
Games

Whatever Happened To Second Life? 209

Posted by Soulskill from the i-blame-ralph dept.
Barence writes "It's desolate, dirty, and sex is outcast to a separate island. In this article, PC Pro's Barry Collins returns to Second Life to find out what went wrong, and why it's raking in more cash than ever before. It's a follow-up to a feature written three years ago, in which Collins spent a week living inside Second Life to see what the huge fuss at the time was all about. The difference three years can make is eye-opening."

Comment Bobbechk's EVE on a Strip about the event (Score 2, Informative) 308

by acz (#30652910) Attached to: <em>EVE Online</em> Battle Breaks Records (And Servers)

OP is a bit lame as it fails to even mention Pandemic Legion who
lost the 4 titans.

Pandemic Legion loses 4 titans
( contains teamspeak recordings of the attack, screenshots, chatlogs, etc...)

Bobbechk's comic strip about the event

EVE-O Uncensored Daily Political Updates (reliable source of information about EVE Online politics, updated daily.)
Games

EVE Online Battle Breaks Records (And Servers) 308

Posted by Soulskill from the blame-it-on-the-torrents dept.
captainktainer writes "In one of the largest tests of EVE Online's new player sovereignty system in the Dominion expansion pack, a fleet of ships attempting to retake a lost star system was effectively annihilated amidst controversy. Defenders IT Alliance, a coalition succeeding the infamous Band of Brothers alliance (whose disbanding was covered in a previous story), effectively annihilated the enemy fleet, destroying thousands of dollars' worth of in-game assets. A representative of the alliance claimed to have destroyed a minimum of four, possibly five or more of the game's most expensive and powerful ship class, known as Titans. Both official and unofficial forums are filled with debate about whether the one-sided battle was due to difference in player skill or the well-known network failures after the release of the expansion. One of the attackers, a member of the GoonSwarm alliance, claims that because of bad coding, 'Only 5% of [the attackers] loaded,' meaning that lag prevented the attackers from using their ships, even as the defenders were able to destroy those ships unopposed. Even members of the victorious IT Alliance expressed disappointment at the outcome of the battle. CCP, EVE Online's publisher, has recently acknowledged poor network performance, especially in the advertised 'large fleet battles' that Dominion was supposed to encourage, and has asked players to help them stress test their code on Tuesday. Despite the admitted network failure, leaders of the attacking force do not expect CCP to replace lost ships, claiming that it was their own fault for not accounting for server failures. The incident raises questions about CCP's ability to cope with the increased network use associated with their rapid growth in subscriptions."
Patents

HP Patents Bignum Implementation From 1912 144

Posted by kdawson from the can-you-spell-prior-art dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The authors of GMP (the GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library) were invited to join Peer-to-Patent to review HP's recent patent on a very old technique for implementing bignums because their software might infringe. Basically, HP's patent claims choosing an exponent based on processor word size. If you choose a 4-bit word size and a binary number, you end up working in hexadecimal. Or for a computer with a 16-bit word and a base-10 number, you use base 10,000 so that each digit of the base-10,000 number would fit into a single 16-bit word. The obvious problem with that is that there's plenty of prior art here. Someone who spent a few minutes Googling found that Knuth describing the idea in TAOCP Vol. 2 and other citations go back to 1912 (which implemented the same algorithm using strips of cardboard and a calculating machine). None of this can be found in the 'references cited' section. Even though the patent examiner did add a couple of references, they appear to have cited some old patents. The patent issued a few months ago was filed back in October of 2004, and collected dust at the USPTO for some 834 days."
NASA

Kepler Finds Five More Exoplanets 102

Posted by kdawson from the nice-places-to-visit-but dept.
Arvisp was one of several readers to send news of five new exoplanets discovered by the Kepler space telescope. In addition to the new "hot Jupiters" — the easiest targets to find — Kepler's early data has turned up some oddities, including something that is too hot to be a planet and too small to be a star. And one of the exoplanets is so fluffy that "it has the density of Styrofoam." The real news is that Kepler works as designed, and the scientists running it are fully confident that it will find Earth-like planets in some star's habitable zone, if they are out there to be found. Here is NASA's press release.

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