The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

ContraCorners · 2010-11-29 Reply Admin

publiclurker:
I asked my local Dungeon Master, and Mistress Mona had some rather interesting suggestions.

JHC. How did that response take 4 hours?

tin · 2010-11-29 Reply Admin

Jerry:
Guess what, cops! We don't like speed traps either. In many cases it is just glorified highway robbery: I pass your ambush, you threaten me with my weapons to extract some cash.

Only with this modern version, it's all legal... Conflict of interest really, since the fines go to the government, who is the ones setting the "safe" speed limit. Need more legally obtained non-tax revenue? Simply lower the speed limits on roads people are known to want to go fast on (highways, etc), and send the police out for some easy pickings.

2010-11-29 Reply Admin

vt_mruhlin:
Caffeine:
Now to convince the nice casino folk that using a 12 sided dice is the same as rolling 2 six sided dice....

I'll admit I'm not a craps expert, but rolling a 1 will probably mean the house gets your money. And of course all your bets like "hard six" that rely on two dice being present... the house wins those bets too.

Yeah, so why would you bet on those things? Bet on 2 and/or 12. Or if it's possible to bet against 7 (I'm even less of a craps expert) that would be the real winner.

Coyne · 2010-11-29 Reply Admin

boog:
The only mistake the author made was to assume that adding two random numbers had any effect on the result. As someone already pointed out, rolling a 12-sided die is the exactly same as two 6-sided dice.

He made another mistake as well: He based his function on a pseudo-random generator.

Such generators have an internal "thread" to the series (because of the use of the "seed" number). If a given output from the generator is exactly a given number, the next output will be exactly a given consequent number, no matter what.

When chaining "rolls" like this, the result is a strong influence on how the value of BadRandom and GoodRandom are related.

In short: One can't make a bad random generator better by combining its chained outputs: The result of the combined chaining is at least as bad/deterministic as the output from the original generator.

An example of where this has a really bad effect is the idea of "expanding" the generator range. Most of them have a cardinality of 32767 or so (they only produce that many distinct numbers). Supposing you need numbers from one to 1,000,000, you might try:

x = INT(1000000 * RND) + 1

... but that will produce a selection from a subset of 32767 of the 1M; that is, there are 967,233 numbers that will never be selected. So you try to improve it:

x = (INT(1000 * RND) * 1000) + INT(1000 * RND) + 1

... and that improves nothing because of the internal relationship between the first and the second RND. The longer expression still only selects from a subset of 32767 numbers.

I suspected a problem like that was why I kept getting selected for Jury duty.

2010-11-29 Reply Admin

Well, I was kind of tied up, and...

Oh, you mean in general. Never mind.

2010-11-29 Reply Admin

publiclurker:
Well, I was kind of tied up, and...
Oh, you mean in general. Never mind.

+1

Maurits · 2010-11-29 Reply Admin

Coyne:
He made another mistake as well: He based his function on a pseudo-random generator.
Such generators have an internal "thread" to the series (because of the use of the "seed" number). If a given output from the generator is exactly a given number, the next output will be exactly a given consequent number, no matter what.

When chaining "rolls" like this, the result is a strong influence on how the value of BadRandom and GoodRandom are related.

In short: One can't make a bad random generator better by combining its chained outputs: The result of the combined chaining is at least as bad/deterministic as the output from the original generator.

An example of where this has a really bad effect is the idea of "expanding" the generator range. Most of them have a cardinality of 32767 or so (they only produce that many distinct numbers). Supposing you need numbers from one to 1,000,000, you might try:
x = INT(1000000 * RND) + 1
... but that will produce a selection from a subset of 32767 of the 1M; that is, there are 967,233 numbers that will never be selected. So you try to improve it:
x = (INT(1000 * RND) * 1000) + INT(1000 * RND) + 1
... and that improves nothing because of the internal relationship between the first and the second RND. The longer expression still only selects from a subset of 32767 numbers.

I suspected a problem like that was why I kept getting selected for Jury duty.

You're assuming that the (pseudo-)random number generator is showing you its entire state as its output every time you generate a number.

For example, if your hypothetical random number generator were to generate the same output - say, 13371337 - twice in a row, your assumption would imply that EVERY subsequent output would be 13371337.

It is quite possible to create random number generators that do not behave this way. One simple way is to use a 64-bit integer as the state, but return only the middle 32 bits at each call.

DescentJS · 2010-11-29 Reply Admin

in which case it's no longer a cardinality of 32767, which was one of his assumptions made earlier.

2010-11-29 Reply Admin

XXXX:
So what happens if the department hires more officers?

Well -- if the function is called correctly -- only the most recently hired 46 newbies get stuck with the crap assignments, and only the 46 most senior officers get the plums.

OTOH if staffing is reduced, the bug that keeps assigning jobs to terminated officers might be hard to find...

-Harrow.

DaveK · 2010-11-29 Reply Admin

Hbuttle:
tom103:
The real WTF is giving up software development to become a cop...

Tbh, I am seriously thinking about becoming ranger, becoming one with the rabbits and squirrels. And I don't think this is in conflict with geekdom. Cop, maybe, but forester, no.

Note though that I wouldn't give up my hobbyist hobbitsy ambitions.

FTFY.

Falcon · 2010-11-30 Reply Admin

tin:
Jerry:
Guess what, cops! We don't like speed traps either. In many cases it is just glorified highway robbery: I pass your ambush, you threaten me with my weapons to extract some cash.

Only with this modern version, it's all legal... Conflict of interest really, since the fines go to the government, who is the ones setting the "safe" speed limit. Need more legally obtained non-tax revenue? Simply lower the speed limits on roads people are known to want to go fast on (highways, etc), and send the police out for some easy pickings.

On the flip side, we get to legally rob the government - obey the speed limits!

What bugs me most is that I get a choice of either breaking the law or looking like an idiot in the eyes of other drivers.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

tom103:
The real WTF is giving up software development to become a cop...

Not really, sometimes I long for a change and imagine myself working as a garbage man. Then I realise the only difference is the smell...

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Caffeine:
Now to convince the nice casino folk that using a 12 sided dice is the same as rolling 2 six sided dice....

Alas it certainly isn't!! (Two die result in a gaussian distribution, whilst a single twelve-sided dice exhibits a normal distribution (assuming a fair dice of course))

CAPATCHA: dolor - An exclaimation from Europeans when they see American's trying to spell colour.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Jerry:
horrible posts – such as manning the speed trap – that just suck the life out of most people for eight hours
Guess what, cops! We don't like speed traps either. In many cases it is just glorified highway robbery: I pass your ambush, you threaten me with my weapons to extract some cash.

You know how there's a gauge on your dashboard that goes up when you go faster and goes down when you go slower? That's called a "speedometer." If you pay really close attention, you'll notice it's marked in "miles per hour" and possibly also some Eurotrash invention that no one cares about.

You may have also noticed these black and white signs that say "SPEED LIMIT" and have a number. Now, what you can do to avoid the ambushes is to make sure the number on the speedometer doesn't get bigger than the number on the "SPEED LIMIT" signs. This might involve driving slower than you sometimes feel like, but it works.

Scarlet Manuka · 2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Me:
drusi:
Will improve the randomness by what? BY WHAT?!
Yeah, don't keep us hanging like this. We need to know.

By a negative amount!

Luiz Felipe:
In fact, the basic`s random algorithm is poor, it dont generate equaly distributed numbers, if your take the sum of probabylities you can enhance its distribution equality, but you need to iterate more times. The algoritims is wrong, but is not an wtf at all.

Incorrect. Yes, BASIC's RNGs were commonly quite poor, on 8-bit micros around 20 years ago. These days they're as good as any other language's for common applications. (Might be some issues with crypto applications; I'd be very surprised if so, but I don't have the first-hand knowledge to rule it out.)

But even with the original poorly-distributed random numbers, adding them together would only make the distribution still less uniform. If you take many samples and add them together as you suggest, Central Limit Theorem says you will wind up with a Gaussian distribution instead of a uniform distribution. That's fine if you need a Guassian distribution, but in most "pick a random number" scenarios, you want a uniform distribution. So by adding them together you're just making it worse.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

tom103:
The real WTF is giving up software development to become a cop...

Eating coffee and drinking donuts all day. One word: mace. Another: taser. A coders dream... Lusers, beware.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Yeah:
I had a pretty good idea what this one was going to be just by reading the title. Back in my very early programming days -- I think I had just discovered loops -- I noticed that the RNG in my programming language returned the same sequence every time. My fix: randomly skip over the first X values so I could at least start at a different place in the sequence. Didn't even finish coding it before I realized nope, that's not it.

... seed it with a number derived from the date and time?

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

methinks:
Matt Westwood:
Monroe:
int getRandomNumber { return 4; //chosen by fair game of russian roulette. //dedicated to the memory of officer #4. //guaranteed to be random.
}

+1
-1 because it is basically stolen: http://xkcd.com/221/

+1 again because of the second comment line, which made me think of: "To Smitty!" (Austin Powers in case anyone didn't plug into the same meme).

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

tin:
Jerry:
Guess what, cops! We don't like speed traps either. In many cases it is just glorified highway robbery: I pass your ambush, you threaten me with my weapons to extract some cash.

Only with this modern version, it's all legal... Conflict of interest really, since the fines go to the government, who is the ones setting the "safe" speed limit. Need more legally obtained non-tax revenue? Simply lower the speed limits on roads people are known to want to go fast on (highways, etc), and send the police out for some easy pickings.

Merely a tax on the impatient.

In the UK there is a campaign to make the speed limit 20 mph in all built-up/residential areas. It's already 20 outside most schools, and there are speed bumps and "traffic calming measures" that cause expensive damage to your vehicle if you exceed such a speed. The ostensible reason is for "greenness" because nobody has been able to explain to the stupes in control that driving a car at 20 mph is significantly less efficient than driving it at 30.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Falcon:
tin:
Jerry:
Guess what, cops! We don't like speed traps either. In many cases it is just glorified highway robbery: I pass your ambush, you threaten me with my weapons to extract some cash.

Only with this modern version, it's all legal... Conflict of interest really, since the fines go to the government, who is the ones setting the "safe" speed limit. Need more legally obtained non-tax revenue? Simply lower the speed limits on roads people are known to want to go fast on (highways, etc), and send the police out for some easy pickings.
On the flip side, we get to legally rob the government - obey the speed limits!

What bugs me most is that I get a choice of either breaking the law or looking like an idiot in the eyes of other drivers.

The middle-aged Melvin in me says I'd prefer to look like an idiot every time. There's something basically deeply wrong with a society if its social norm is based on the attitudes and aspirations of sub-intelligent adolescent males.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

J.O.A.T.:
tom103:
The real WTF is giving up software development to become a cop...

Not really, sometimes I long for a change and imagine myself working as a garbage man. Then I realise the only difference is the smell...

Yes, I'd miss the stench of my coworkers too.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

KMP:
This article reminds me of dilbert's adventures in accouting.
http://dilbert.com/fast/2001-10-25/

FTFY.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Bill's Kid:
How do you role a "1" with two six-sided die?
Or was that sarcasm?

You got lot of answers.. Noone of them correct ovbiously. Here ya go

[image]

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

You know what they say: the only good pig is a dead pig. What? I like bacon, what's wrong with that? Oh, you didn't think I meant... oh, you!

Personally, whenever I want to generate a random number I roll two six side pigs, add the result and divide my two. Then I slaughter them and make bacon. Delicious, random bacon.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

iToad:
1. The pay is probably better. The cops have unicorns.

FTFY

Coyne · 2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Maurits:
Coyne:
He made another mistake as well: He based his function on a pseudo-random generator.
Such generators have an internal "thread" to the series (because of the use of the "seed" number). If a given output from the generator is exactly a given number, the next output will be exactly a given consequent number, no matter what.

When chaining "rolls" like this, the result is a strong influence on how the value of BadRandom and GoodRandom are related.

In short: One can't make a bad random generator better by combining its chained outputs: The result of the combined chaining is at least as bad/deterministic as the output from the original generator.

An example of where this has a really bad effect is the idea of "expanding" the generator range. Most of them have a cardinality of 32767 or so (they only produce that many distinct numbers). Supposing you need numbers from one to 1,000,000, you might try:
x = INT(1000000 * RND) + 1
... but that will produce a selection from a subset of 32767 of the 1M; that is, there are 967,233 numbers that will never be selected. So you try to improve it:
x = (INT(1000 * RND) * 1000) + INT(1000 * RND) + 1
... and that improves nothing because of the internal relationship between the first and the second RND. The longer expression still only selects from a subset of 32767 numbers.

I suspected a problem like that was why I kept getting selected for Jury duty.
You're assuming that the (pseudo-)random number generator is showing you its entire state as its output every time you generate a number.

For example, if your hypothetical random number generator were to generate the same output - say, 13371337 - twice in a row, your assumption would imply that EVERY subsequent output would be 13371337.

It is quite possible to create random number generators that do not behave this way. One simple way is to use a 64-bit integer as the state, but return only the middle 32 bits at each call.

No, I'm saying that if a given series is:

13371337 29102

Then the 29102 is implied by the 13371337. In a pseudo-random generator that uses an internal seed and produces 32767 distinct outputs, then any output implies a specific successive output.

   seed(1) ---implies--> seed(2) ---implies--> seed(3) --->
      |                     |                     |
      V                     V                     V
   prand(1)              prand(2)              prand(3)

Therefore, while the "prand" values from the above are semi-unpredictable, there are only 32767 distinct combinations of prand(1)+prand(2).

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Dr. Sus:
You know what they say: the only good pig is a dead pig. What? I like bacon, what's wrong with that? Oh, you didn't think I meant... oh, you!
Personally, whenever I want to generate a random number I roll two six side pigs, add the result and divide my two. Then I slaughter them and make bacon. Delicious, random bacon.

Proof yet again that everything is better with bacon, even this thread. I applaud you sir.

slavik262 · 2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
tin:
Jerry:
Guess what, cops! We don't like speed traps either. In many cases it is just glorified highway robbery: I pass your ambush, you threaten me with my weapons to extract some cash.

Only with this modern version, it's all legal... Conflict of interest really, since the fines go to the government, who is the ones setting the "safe" speed limit. Need more legally obtained non-tax revenue? Simply lower the speed limits on roads people are known to want to go fast on (highways, etc), and send the police out for some easy pickings.

Merely a tax on the impatient.

In the UK there is a campaign to make the speed limit 20 mph in all built-up/residential areas. It's already 20 outside most schools, and there are speed bumps and "traffic calming measures" that cause expensive damage to your vehicle if you exceed such a speed. The ostensible reason is for "greenness" because nobody has been able to explain to the stupes in control that driving a car at 20 mph is significantly less efficient than driving it at 30.

Studies have shown that for every life a speed bump ostensibly saves by making you drive slower, many more are lost due to the delays it causes to emergency vehicles.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

slavik262:
Matt Westwood:
tin:
Jerry:
Guess what, cops! We don't like speed traps either. In many cases it is just glorified highway robbery: I pass your ambush, you threaten me with my weapons to extract some cash.

Only with this modern version, it's all legal... Conflict of interest really, since the fines go to the government, who is the ones setting the "safe" speed limit. Need more legally obtained non-tax revenue? Simply lower the speed limits on roads people are known to want to go fast on (highways, etc), and send the police out for some easy pickings.

Merely a tax on the impatient.

In the UK there is a campaign to make the speed limit 20 mph in all built-up/residential areas. It's already 20 outside most schools, and there are speed bumps and "traffic calming measures" that cause expensive damage to your vehicle if you exceed such a speed. The ostensible reason is for "greenness" because nobody has been able to explain to the stupes in control that driving a car at 20 mph is significantly less efficient than driving it at 30.

Studies have shown that for every life a speed bump ostensibly saves by making you drive slower, many more are lost due to the delays it causes to emergency vehicles.

Studies have also shown that getting up from bed in the morning is more dangerous than Creutzfeldt Jakob disease. Studies can show just about anything. Don't bring the argument "Studies have shown..." I tend to agree with the result of the study, though.

But maybe - just maybe - the one at fault is not the speed bump who forces people to save lifes, but the driver that can not slow down and save lifes without the speed bump.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
tin:
Jerry:
Guess what, cops! We don't like speed traps either. In many cases it is just glorified highway robbery: I pass your ambush, you threaten me with my weapons to extract some cash.

Only with this modern version, it's all legal... Conflict of interest really, since the fines go to the government, who is the ones setting the "safe" speed limit. Need more legally obtained non-tax revenue? Simply lower the speed limits on roads people are known to want to go fast on (highways, etc), and send the police out for some easy pickings.

Merely a tax on the impatient.

In the UK there is a campaign to make the speed limit 20 mph in all built-up/residential areas. It's already 20 outside most schools, and there are speed bumps and "traffic calming measures" that cause expensive damage to your vehicle if you exceed such a speed. The ostensible reason is for "greenness" because nobody has been able to explain to the stupes in control that driving a car at 20 mph is significantly less efficient than driving it at 30.

If you are referring to the fact that you need to use a lower gear for 20 mph, because of which your engine consumes more fuel, then you should consider not the speed limit being at fault but the manufacturer of the car. Human needs to control the machine, not the other way around.

For all those who say "it is so damn slow": Please take the time to calculate the additional time you need to get from A to B if in towns the speed limit is 20 mph instead of 30 mph. And then calculate how much longer your way for a complete stop is. Don't forget the moment of shock. I am not so familiar with mph, but even for 10 kmh it is a big difference. Think about whether the tiny amount of time is really worth the greater risk of causing an accident, running people over and other things.

(An example with kmh: If you are driving at 30 kmh and a kid runs in front of you and you only just manage to stop without running it over - with what speed would you hit the kid if you were driving at 50 kmh?)

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

My Name:
Matt Westwood:
tin:
Jerry:
Guess what, cops! We don't like speed traps either. In many cases it is just glorified highway robbery: I pass your ambush, you threaten me with my weapons to extract some cash.

Only with this modern version, it's all legal... Conflict of interest really, since the fines go to the government, who is the ones setting the "safe" speed limit. Need more legally obtained non-tax revenue? Simply lower the speed limits on roads people are known to want to go fast on (highways, etc), and send the police out for some easy pickings.

Merely a tax on the impatient.

In the UK there is a campaign to make the speed limit 20 mph in all built-up/residential areas. It's already 20 outside most schools, and there are speed bumps and "traffic calming measures" that cause expensive damage to your vehicle if you exceed such a speed. The ostensible reason is for "greenness" because nobody has been able to explain to the stupes in control that driving a car at 20 mph is significantly less efficient than driving it at 30.

If you are referring to the fact that you need to use a lower gear for 20 mph, because of which your engine consumes more fuel, then you should consider not the speed limit being at fault but the manufacturer of the car. Human needs to control the machine, not the other way around.

For all those who say "it is so damn slow": Please take the time to calculate the additional time you need to get from A to B if in towns the speed limit is 20 mph instead of 30 mph. And then calculate how much longer your way for a complete stop is. Don't forget the moment of shock. I am not so familiar with mph, but even for 10 kmh it is a big difference. Think about whether the tiny amount of time is really worth the greater risk of causing an accident, running people over and other things.

(An example with kmh: If you are driving at 30 kmh and a kid runs in front of you and you only just manage to stop without running it over - with what speed would you hit the kid if you were driving at 50 kmh?)

I'm a follower of Darwin. Children too stupid to learn not to run out into the road without looking are too stupid to survive to adulthood.

30 is a perfectly good speed limit on a public road IMO as long as you're concentrating on your driving (e.g. not using a mobile phone, not watching the TV, not reading your emails, etc.) and if by chance you do see kids dicking about on the pavement, be extra prepared to slam on the anchors.

And as for the fools who let their children play soccer in the street, they don't deserve to have bred in the first place.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

To all the retarded "traffic calming" advocates - just look at this shit:

[image]

This is what we have to put up with in the UK. What the FUCKING FUCK is going on? You have a perfectly straight piece of road in a non-populated area with excellent visibility... then some dumb fucking council goes and builds a pavement right in the middle of it!!! Does ANYONE think this is a good idea? This is immeasurably more dangerous than leaving the road as it is. If you know it's there then good for you, you're in a position to account for it. And if you don't know it's there? Well, bad luck because you're liable to go straight into it, causing an accident on an otherwise safe bit of road.

There is no logic, sense or decency to this. The council are literally making our roads more dangerous. Anyone who advocates this clearly doesn't have to put up with it on a daily basis. How would you like driving if you knew that that at any time you might run into a bloody great piece of concrete that some retard has just stuck into the middle of the road, without justification and without warning? Trust me, it's not fun. I ride a motorbike so this isn't going to be a bent fender, this is going to be a major spill and a trip to the hospital - maybe even the morgue.

For an extra kick, notice the sign there - the sign that warns you after you've passed the fucking thing. I swear it's like a bad joke, or at least it would be if it wasn't so ridiculously dangerous.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

slavik262:
Studies have shown that for every life a speed bump ostensibly saves by making you drive slower, many more are lost due to the delays it causes to emergency vehicles.

Citations please! (Either I think you're just making things up using the "I saw it on the discovery channel" maneuver, or I agree with you and want to be able to use this in future arguments)

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

sprained:
Dumb question... Do you get a gaussian distribution from rolling two 6-sided dice?

Unfortunately, I degaussed my dice beforehand.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
I'm a follower of Darwin. Children too stupid to learn not to run out into the road without looking are too stupid to survive to adulthood.

We could extend your logic a little. All children should be sent through a live-fire obstacle course every year on their birthday. The ones that don't make it were too stupid to live. Yes?

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Maurits:
Coyne:
He made another mistake as well: He based his function on a pseudo-random generator.
...snip...
You're assuming that the (pseudo-)random number generator is showing you its entire state as its output every time you generate a number.

For example, if your hypothetical random number generator were to generate the same output - say, 13371337 - twice in a row, your assumption would imply that EVERY subsequent output would be 13371337.

It is quite possible to create random number generators that do not behave this way. One simple way is to use a 64-bit integer as the state, but return only the middle 32 bits at each call.

I once had to explain to a user that our software's PRNG was not "bad", and the cause of his problem was his re-seeding the PRNG every time with the result of the previous call.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

trwtf:
slavik262:
Studies have shown that for every life a speed bump ostensibly saves by making you drive slower, many more are lost due to the delays it causes to emergency vehicles.

Citations please! (Either I think you're just making things up using the "I saw it on the discovery channel" maneuver, or I agree with you and want to be able to use this in future arguments)

Well, that was easy: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3288795.stm

Brian Coleman:
We already know from the London Ambulance Service that so-called 'traffic calming' causes over 500 deaths a year in London alone, and now the police have confirmed it affects their response times too. The evidence is clear - road humps are a menace which are endangering Londoners.

I take it you've never heard of Google? There are lots of specific studies that you can find very easily but I think the above quote rather nicely sums up the situation. The London Ambulance Service report that he cites is also available online but it's very in-depth and quite impenetrable, I wouldn't want to confuse you because you're obviously not the brightest of sparks.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
trwtf:
slavik262:
Studies have shown that for every life a speed bump ostensibly saves by making you drive slower, many more are lost due to the delays it causes to emergency vehicles.

Citations please! (Either I think you're just making things up using the "I saw it on the discovery channel" maneuver, or I agree with you and want to be able to use this in future arguments)
Well, that was easy: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3288795.stm

Brian Coleman:
We already know from the London Ambulance Service that so-called 'traffic calming' causes over 500 deaths a year in London alone, and now the police have confirmed it affects their response times too. The evidence is clear - road humps are a menace which are endangering Londoners.
I take it you've never heard of Google? There are lots of specific studies that you can find very easily but I think the above quote rather nicely sums up the situation. The London Ambulance Service report that he cites is also available online but it's very in-depth and quite impenetrable, I wouldn't want to confuse you because you're obviously not the brightest of sparks.

It would be nice to have something other than some local politician's assertion that this is the case. Since you cited studies, I assumed you had some convincing data in mind, and would be interested in providing a pointer to it, so others might share in your brilliance. Apparently, though, you meant "studies have shown" in the sense of "I believe and want you to believe that..." and now you're doing some back-and-fill, looking for studies to cite. Thanks for clarifying.

Markp · 2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
I'm a follower of Darwin. Children too stupid to learn not to run out into the road without looking are too stupid to survive to adulthood.

That is NOT Darwinism. Natural selection is not about what happens to individuals, and there is no evidence that the stupidity causing kids to run out on roads will be genetically (or even socially) passed down to their own offspring.

Also, it's pretty much always a misunderstanding of Darwinism to cite natural selection for consequences of destructive traits that can be altered. Humans have the ability to learn new things.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood all up in this piece.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Have we forgotten that BobX can handle any magnitude of randomality? C'mon, you call yourselves software engineers.... <bobx><rnd/></bobx>

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Mike:
Caffeine:
Now to convince the nice casino folk that using a 12 sided dice is the same as rolling 2 six sided dice....

Alas it certainly isn't!! (Two die result in a gaussian distribution, whilst a single twelve-sided dice exhibits a normal distribution (assuming a fair dice of course))

Really? REALLY?

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

trwtf:
Thanks for clarifying.

You're welcome, thanks for listening.

hatterson · 2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Mike:
Caffeine:
Now to convince the nice casino folk that using a 12 sided dice is the same as rolling 2 six sided dice....

Alas it certainly isn't!! (Two die result in a gaussian distribution, whilst a single twelve-sided dice exhibits a normal distribution (assuming a fair dice of course))

CAPATCHA: dolor - An exclaimation from Europeans when they see American's trying to spell colour.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Ben:
Jerry:
horrible posts – such as manning the speed trap – that just suck the life out of most people for eight hours
Guess what, cops! We don't like speed traps either. In many cases it is just glorified highway robbery: I pass your ambush, you threaten me with my weapons to extract some cash.
You know how there's a gauge on your dashboard that goes up when you go faster and goes down when you go slower? That's called a "speedometer." If you pay really close attention, you'll notice it's marked in "miles per hour" and possibly also some Eurotrash invention that no one cares about.
You may have also noticed these black and white signs that say "SPEED LIMIT" and have a number. Now, what you can do to avoid the ambushes is to make sure the number on the speedometer doesn't get bigger than the number on the "SPEED LIMIT" signs. This might involve driving slower than you sometimes feel like, but it works.

Thanks for the education Ben, I am impressed by your vast knowledge.

Hey I have an idea. When you're walking down the hall in my office, just stop every 10 feet and touch your nose to the floor. So what if it is completely unnecessary and only serves to slow you down -- it will allow you to avoid the mandatory $500 fine I impose on everyone else. So, you have total freedom of choice here. No reason to complain.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

i can haz new wtf?

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

The basic idea behind this function is that the rand function is not random enough, so he generates two of them and adds them together.

First reductio ad absurdum (assuming this is not already absurdum enough): If we always returned "2", that would not be very random. If we always returned "4", that would not be very random either. Ah! So let's return 2+4! That should be much more random!

Second reductio ad absurdum: He generates a "bad" random number, then generates what he supposes is a "good" random number and carefully filters it against the bad random number. So if we always returned "2", that would not be very random. Therefore, we should filter out 2 from our results. Never return 2! But hmm, the same could be said if we always returned 3 or we always returned 4, etc. So there is no number that is acceptable. The function should always throw an exception of "Cannot pick a suitably random number."

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
tin:
Jerry:
Guess what, cops! We don't like speed traps either. In many cases it is just glorified highway robbery: I pass your ambush, you threaten me with my weapons to extract some cash.

Only with this modern version, it's all legal... Conflict of interest really, since the fines go to the government, who is the ones setting the "safe" speed limit. Need more legally obtained non-tax revenue? Simply lower the speed limits on roads people are known to want to go fast on (highways, etc), and send the police out for some easy pickings.

Merely a tax on the impatient.

In the UK there is a campaign to make the speed limit 20 mph in all built-up/residential areas. It's already 20 outside most schools, and there are speed bumps and "traffic calming measures" that cause expensive damage to your vehicle if you exceed such a speed. The ostensible reason is for "greenness" because nobody has been able to explain to the stupes in control that driving a car at 20 mph is significantly less efficient than driving it at 30.

I think you'll find the ostensible reason is to stop children getting killed when they run out into the road without looking properly. At 30mph you'll will kill a lot more children than at 20mph. And many people go over the limit anyway, because of the margin of error.

I've never ever heard "greenness" touted as a reason for this. It sounds like a good idea to me. I don't like boy racers and rat-run businessmen speeding round residential streets.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

Jerry:
Hey I have an idea. When you're walking down the hall in my office, just stop every 10 feet and touch your nose to the floor. So what if it is completely unnecessary and only serves to slow you down -- it will allow you to avoid the mandatory $500 fine I impose on everyone else. So, you have total freedom of choice here. No reason to complain.

Hey I have an idea. Let's make up an analogous situation, except with all the dangerous parts removed. That way all the safety measures look ridiculous.

2010-11-30 Reply Admin

TimG:
Jerry:
Hey I have an idea. When you're walking down the hall in my office, just stop every 10 feet and touch your nose to the floor. So what if it is completely unnecessary and only serves to slow you down -- it will allow you to avoid the mandatory $500 fine I impose on everyone else. So, you have total freedom of choice here. No reason to complain.
Hey I have an idea. Let's make up an analogous situation, except with all the dangerous parts removed. That way all the safety measures look ridiculous.

Driving 70 in a 55 zone is not dangerous. If it were, the millions of people that do it every day would be dead.

Driving 55 in a 55 zone, on the other hand, can be dangerous.

Stop using allegations of safety as an excuse to steal. It's no different from the mafia "protecting" you from your business burning down.

SuperRand

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