7 December 2004
Today's reading list
- Don't believe the hype, No more heroes: music
- Old Faithful, Testing the limits of love, by David Sedaris
- Take a Chance, Scientists put randomness to work
- Don't believe the hype, No more heroes: music
- Old Faithful, Testing the limits of love, by David Sedaris
- Take a Chance, Scientists put randomness to work
[ via Guardian Unlimited ]
A handful of music critics take on some of the over-hyped icons (The Beatles, The Clash, U2, etc.) with sometimes incisive, sometimes bland results. There should be more attempts to say that maybe just because something is a super hit doesn't mean it's deserving--a point often made but seldom acted on.
[ via The New Yorker ]
As always, Sedaris' [Wikipedia] writing here is both funny and touching.
[ via Science News ]
A nice review of random numbers [Wikipedia] and their uses. Computer-generated random numbers are categorized as pseudo-random [Wikipedia] because they are generated using an algorithm that will eventually repeat. The best algorithm is the Mersenne twister [Wikipedia]. That algorithm has the Mersenne prime [Wikipedia] (2^19937) - 1 as its period (the number of numbers it will generate before repeating).
The only way to get truly random numbers from computers is to introduce the randomness from the real world. Random.org uses radio noise to generate random numbers. LavaRnd uses digital camera noise--it originally used Lava Lamps until the designers found out that the cameras, and not the lamps, were introducing the randomness.
- Today's reading list posted by sstrader on 6 March 2010 at 4:51:50 PM
- Today's reading list posted by sstrader on 8 February 2010 at 8:23:12 PM
- Today's reading list posted by sstrader on 2 January 2010 at 11:53:18 AM
- Today's reading list posted by sstrader on 23 December 2009 at 9:51:03 AM
- Week's reading list posted by sstrader on 28 August 2009 at 2:44:16 PM