Comments for Nerd Wisdom

Comment on WordPress.com by gaberose

gaberose — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:30:50 +0000

hey, thanks for the info, been working on my wordpress.com hosted site. it seems like you can’t add any new widgets (aka twitter) for this type of site though… is there any way around this? getting confused…

Comment on Cynthia Kenyon’s Long-lived Worms by Longevity Malc

Longevity Malc — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 07:47:01 +0000

Very interesting. Yes - when you think about it, why can some turtles live to 120 years; and some whales to 200 years - yet human are limited to a very maximum, currently, of 120? Age expectation seems to be rather random.

No doubt there are genes affecting this; but also other processes which we can control.

(See Aubrey de Grey on Youtube. )

Cheers

Malc

Comment on “On Intelligence” and Numenta by Jake

Jake — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 08:51:51 +0000

Hi, would you be willing to let me see what source code you came up with while experimenting?

Please email me back. Thanks

Comment on Connect6 by Lkozma

Lkozma — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:05:07 +0000

Very interesting game, thanks for posting. Another common way of balancing in some games (for ex. Hex) is to offer second player to swap colors if he wishes after first move. In Connect6 however, this might be a bit too crude.

Comment on NobelPrize.org by Robert

Robert — Tue, 27 May 2008 16:32:13 +0000

Poor old Doris. Within six months she had given away the Proze money and generally regretted the impact the whole thing had had on her twilight years.

Comment on More on Leopard by Matt

Matt — Tue, 27 May 2008 02:53:12 +0000

I share Barak’s sentiments.

Comment on SICM on Mac OS X by CrimsonMinstral

CrimsonMinstral — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 00:52:05 +0000

Actually it does work on a PPC Mac (G4 17″ 1.67GHz with 2GB RAM). Using your instructions (thanks by the way), I got mit-scheme and scmutils built and running. There is a new mit-scheme by the way but it no longer comes with a PPC binary. You either need to use the 20070909 package *or* use the new package a build mit-scheme using the portable C package. It works but it takes a *long* time to build.

Here, however is my problem. I keep getting a

;Unassigned variable: *compiler-input-pathname*

error when I bind the following definitions from Chapter 1 of the book:

(define
((L-free-particle mass) local)
(let ((v (velocity local)))
(* 1/2 mass (dot-product v v))))

(define q
(up (literal-function ‘x)
(literal-function ‘y)
(literal-function ‘z)))

(define (Lagrangian-action L q t1 t2)
(definite-integral (compose L (Gamma q)) t1 t2))

(define (test-path t)
(up (+ (* 4 t) 7)
(+ (* 3 t) 5)
(+ (* 2 t) 1)))

(Lagrangian-action (L-free-particle 3.0) test-path 0.0 10.0)

Any thoughts? The problem exists using a straight terminal or GNU-Emacs. Seems to me this variable should have been bound in either the mit-scheme build or the scmutils build. I’ve used both the 20070909 PPC binary and built the 20080130 source for mit-scheme. Same problem exists in both cases so it seems this might be internal to scmutils. What did I miss?

p.s. I wish scmutils didn’t have so much eccentric code in it. mzscheme/DrScheme would be a better environment and make the package more accessible for teaching. The port seems to be a real bear unfortunately.

Comment on Marvel Trading Card Game / Magic the Gathering by spade games

spade games — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 13:00:54 +0000

your interest in Magic the Gathering has been piqued by one or another of the previous posts here, you might want to know that this coming week-end

Comment on SICM on Mac OS X by Jonathan Yedidia

Jonathan Yedidia — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 16:57:11 +0000

gmlk,
I’m sorry it didn’t work for you. I’m guessing that my instructions will only work for an Intel Mac. Especially since scmutils-200609-06-ix86-gnu-linux-sarge.tar.gz has “ix86″ in it.

Comment on SICM on Mac OS X by gmlk

gmlk — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:04:53 +0000

Following your instructions on a powerbook G4 15″ with 2GB of RAM I get an “out of memory” error:

; Compiling file: “rules.bin” => “rules.c”…
;Aborting!: out of memory
;GC #1277: took: 0.10 (36%) CPU time, 0.16 (46%) real time; free: 973569
;GC #1278: took: 0.90 (100%) CPU time, 0.14 (98%) real time; free: 973727
;GC #1279: took: 0.90 (100%) CPU time, 0.14 (99%) real time; free: 973727

Any suggestions would be helpful?

Comment on Richard Feynman by Shubhendu Trivedi

Shubhendu Trivedi — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 06:26:42 +0000

Yes this is indeed a very good book by Feynman, i am lucky enough to have read it.
Though i must admit that i am a little surprised by some above posts, but i appreciate them as they are very honest. There are a few more books by Feynman that just must be read..
like “no ordinary genius”, “what do you care what other people think”, tuva or bust..i have not been able to obtain tuva or bust.
and really want to read it..
there are a few other books as well, as some body mentioned above, QED, and six easy pieces and six not so easy pieces..Also his thesis is now available in the form of a book for those interested!

Nice Post Jonathan, it is very difficult to write about a hero in such few words! and you have done so very well!

Comment on Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Peter

Peter — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:55:35 +0000

I’m not a big fan. They only really cover symbolism which is only half of modern AI. Neural methods are almost entirely ignored.

Comment on More on Leopard by Barak

Barak — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 17:09:25 +0000

Hey! What happened to Nerd Wisdom?

Comment on Connect6 by john

john — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 20:00:42 +0000

Cool game. I love its simple rules yet complex gameplay. I also like how it is a paper and pencil game, meaning it comes in handy.

Comment on Using Unambiguous Notation by Gregory

Gregory — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 06:59:00 +0000

There is a certain slopiness in the way many physicists (not all) handle formulas.
That kind of slopiness is completely unforgiven in programming which punishes
every small error. What is truly amazing is that theoretical physics is much more agreeable lady so that one can
get quite far in such a fuzzy way. We all know how we do it - we correct things further on the way using symmetries,
limit cases, common sense etc. The formalism is usually so powerful, it works for you. But that’s because the people
who invented the formalism weren’t of this sloppy kind.