How about time travellers from the Imperium Romanum?
2,393 karma · joined January 2, 2009
- from Great Expectations by Charles DickensThe argument talks about the experience of "greenness" as the after-image of a red object:
Suppose Bertie is experiencing a green after-image
as a result of seeing a red flash bulb go off;
the greenness of the after-image is the quale.
Sensory qualities pose a serious problem for materialist
theories of the mind. For where, ontologically speaking,
are they located?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22—And_He_Built_a_Crooked_Hous...
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/die-digital-d...
The other content to be blocked are 'theses concerning the future of journalism' ...
Der Zauberlehrling
Hat der alte Hexenmeister
Sich doch einmal wegbegeben!
Und nun sollen seine Geister
Auch nach meinem Willen leben.
Seine Wort´ und Werke
Merkt ich und den Brauch,
Und mit Geistesstärke
Tu ich Wunder auch.
Walle! walle
Manche Strecke,
Daß, zum Zwecke,
Wasser fließe
Und mit reichem, vollem Schwalle
Zu dem Bade sich ergieße.
Und nun komm, du alter Besen!
Nimm die schlechten Lumpenhüllen;
Bist schon lange Knecht gewesen:
Nun erfülle meinen Willen!
Auf zwei Beinen stehe,
Oben sei ein Kopf,
Eile nun und gehe
Mit dem Wassertopf!
Walle! walle
Manche Strecke,
Daß, zum Zwecke,
Wasser fließe
Und mit reichem, vollem Schwalle
Zu dem Bade sich ergieße.
Seht, er läuft zum Ufer nieder,
Wahrlich! ist schon an dem Flusse,
Und mit Blitzesschnelle wieder
Ist er hier mit raschem Gusse.
Schon zum zweiten Male!
Wie das Becken schwillt!
Wie sich jede Schale
Voll mit Wasser füllt!
Stehe! stehe!
Denn wir haben
Deiner Gaben
Vollgemessen! -
Ach, ich merk es! Wehe! wehe!
Hab ich doch das Wort vergessen!
Ach, das Wort, worauf am Ende
Er das wird, was er gewesen.
Ach, er läuft und bringt behende!
Wärst du doch der alte Besen!
Immer neue Güsse
Bringt er schnell herein,
Ach! und hundert Flüsse
Stürzen auf mich ein.
Nein, nicht länger
Kann ichs lassen;
Will ihn fassen.
Das ist Tücke!
Ach! nun wird mir immer bänger!
Welche Miene! welche Blicke!
O, du Ausgeburt der Hölle!
Soll das ganze Haus ersaufen?
Seh ich über jede Schwelle
Doch schon Wasserströme laufen.
Ein verruchter Besen,
Der nicht hören will!
Stock, der du gewesen,
Steh doch wieder still!
Willsts am Ende
Gar nicht lassen?
Will dich fassen,
Will dich halten
Und das alte Holz behende
Mit dem scharfen Beile spalten.
Seht, da kommt er schleppend wieder!
Wie ich mich nur auf dich werfe,
Gleich, o Kobold, liegst du nieder;
Krachend trifft die glatte Schärfe.
Wahrlich! brav getroffen!
Seht, er ist entzwei!
Und nun kann ich hoffen,
Und ich atme frei!
Wehe! wehe!
Beide Teile
Stehn in Eile
Schon als Knechte
Völlig fertig in die Höhe!
Helft mir, ach! ihr hohen Mächte!
Und sie laufen! Naß und nässer.
Wirds im Saal und auf den Stufen.
Welch entsetzliches Gewässer!
Herr und Meister! hör mich rufen! -
Ach, da kommt der Meister!
Herr, die Not ist groß!
Die ich rief, die Geister
Werd ich nun nicht los.
"In die Ecke,
Besen! Besen!
Seids gewesen.
Denn als Geister
Ruft euch nur, zu seinem Zwecke,
Erst hervor der alte Meister.">> consider it uncool to get really good at doing integrals:
>> it's just one step up from memorizing digits of pi.
I consider it cool to get really good at anything.
This reminds me of the beginning of the babel fish argument for the non-existence of god by Douglas Adams:
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_system
A formal system has several components:
An alphabet of symbols from which sequences or strings of symbols are constructed. Some of these strings of symbols can be well-formed according to some formal grammar, which is the next component.
Next we have a collection of basic assumptions, called axioms, which are supposed to reflect the obvious truths about whatever we want to formalize in the formal system.
And then we have some rules of inference. They allow us to derive conclusions from premises. An example would be the rule of modus ponens: If we have "If A then B" and "A", we can conclude "B".
An example of a formal system is ZFC set theory which can be regarded as a formalization of one concept, the concept of a set:
We take "classical predicate logic" as a background formal system, it already has logical symbols, like symbols for AND, OR and "IF ... THEN ..." and quantifiers "FOR ALL ..." and "THERE EXISTS ...".
We enhance this logic with one non-logical symbol, the binary element-of-symbol ∈. With it we want to express the idea that something is an element of something, for example x ∈ y is supposed to mean that x is an element of y.
Of course this is a bit simplified, but now we can build expressions (with symbols from the alphabet, according to the grammar for logical formulas plus the element symbol) which talk about the element-of-relationship between individuals.
Next, we sit together at a round table and discuss which properties about sets and element-of or membership of a set we see as self-evident - there is room for discussion and there can be many different intuitions.
For example, as in ZFC set theory, we may want to have some existence axioms. They guarantee us that in this formal system certain objects do exist. An example is the axiom of the empty set: There exists a set which has no elements. This statement can be written in our formal language.
Other axioms may have a more constructive meaning. Instead of telling us that something exists, they say that given the existence of some objects we know the existence of further objects. An example would be the axiom of set unions: Given some arbitrary sets A and B, there exists a set C, which contains all the members of A and all the members of B as its elements. Another axiom asserts the existence of an unordered pair of any two given sets, from this we can define the concept of an ordered pair, which is very important.
ZFC is one example of a set theory, there are many different set theories. You could exchange classical logic with intuitionistic logic and arrive at some formal system for intuitionistic or constructive set theory. You can drop certain axioms, because maybe they do not appear as self-evident to you (for example the axiom of choice, which contributes the "C" in ZFC, is not accepted by some people). You may add further axioms to arrive at a possibly stronger theory.
One interesting aspect about set theory is that the concept of set is very powerful and expressive, because many concepts from modern mathematics can be build up from sets: natural numbers 0,1,2,3,... can be constructed from the empty set, functions can be represented through ordered pairs of sets. Sometimes set theory is regarded as "the foundation of all mathematics", but feel free to disagree! Just because natural numbers can be modelled as sets it is not certain that natural numbers are indeed sets.
The basic pattern above is the formalization of an intuitive or natural concept, something from everyday life. We try to capture the essentials of this concept within a formal system. And then we can use the deductive power of the formal system to arrive at new and hopefully interesting conclusions about whatever we wanted to formalize. These conclusions are theorems. Not all theorems are interesting, some are even confusing, paradox and disppointing. Formalization is used to arrive at new insights about the original concept. Interesting in this context is Carnap and his idea of explication of inexact prescientific concepts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explication
What I want to express with this is that it is really possible to start your journey into mathematics at a beginning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbre_du_Ténéré
http://knowledgenuts.com/2013/09/30/a-drunk-driver-killed-th...
>> Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information
>> and make it universally accessible ...
http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=GeoCities
The file was huge, about several hundred gigabyte. I didn't download it, because I don't have enough space and downloading it would take ages with my slow connection.
On http://reocities.com/ you can browse through some of the old pages and sites, but many things are broken now, missing images.
If I am indeed a brain in a vat, how far can I trust my own thought processes (like a logical argumentation)?
And taking this further, could it be that I am only a part of a brain in a vat where the other part has already been replaced by computer controlled cyborg implants changing the way information is processed?
The impression that an argument is logically correct and plausible may be a phantom signal resulting from input into a specialized area in my remaining brain.
Even the thought that I had a thought is then maybe wrong. How would it feel to have the convincing impression that I am having very deep thoughts right now without ever been able to perceive one single aspect of these thoughts?
- Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics
- Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics
both are published by O'Reilly (I haven't them, so I can't give a recommendation. Also I don't have any contact with the field of Bioinformatics.).
A search on Amazon reveals quite a lot of books on the combination of Perl and Bioinformatics.
There is another book which sounds interesting:
- Developing Bioinformatics Computer Skills (O'Reilly)
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781565926646.do
It also appears to discuss the question why Perl is used for some things in Bioinformatics.
The same author (Cynthia Gibas) has written an introductory article:
Computers + Biology = Bioinformatics
http://oreilly.com/news/bioinformatics_0401.html
I can't tell you if learning Perl will give you a competitive advantage in job applications, but I have enjoyed learning Perl very much :)
An Ork fortress for over 320 million euros: A virtual claims report for the Film “The Hobbit”. Part II – property damage:
https://www.allianz.com/en/press/news/studies/news_2013-08-2...
Also check out the demo scene on the web, there are some people doing absolutely cool stuff.
I'm still at the very beginning with this project and have no interesting results yet :(
There is a model relationship between artificial neural networks and sets of sentences in a formal language. One idea is to track sets of sentences during the training of a network and see if something interesting can be found.
Constructs using a sequence of eval with base64decode and often gzip compression are very common for obfuscating malicious PHP code. I would expect that people are much more likely to look for these in the source code to find out if a website has been compromized rather than looking at EXIF data. So I think, yes, this is something different.
In the article they call this a steganographic malware. But actually the information is not embedded in the picture content, but in the meta or EXIF data. It would be an application of steganography, if the malicious code would be extracted from information that is part of the actual picture and it is not obvious that this information is present in the first place. For example, there could be the drawing of a house in the picture with a cow and a horse and the grass blades in front of it represent 1s and 0s. Then some clever program executes the grass blades code.
It seems that the authors were among the first to detect this kind of attack using the EXIF data in the wild. And of course the want to advertise that their product detects this kind of compromize.