Table of Contents
Gauss jokes
Collection of some of my favorite Gauss jokes.
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Gauss never has an underfull hbox (badness 10000) warning.
When Gauss integrates he doesn't need to add a constant.
Fermat once made Gauss angry. The result…Fermat's Last Theorem.
When Gauss tells you that he's lying, he's telling the truth.
It only takes Gauss 4 minutes to sing “Aleph-Null Bottles of Beer on the Wall”.
Imaginary numbers are simply those that Gauss has not deemed worthy of existence.
There are no Fermat Primes greater than 65,537 because Gauss saw that Fermat was on to something, and well…he put an end to that.
Only Gauss knows whether Schrodinger's cat is dead or alive.
Gauss can let epsilon be less than zero.
Gauss shaves both himself and Bertrand Russell.
Gauss can walk through Konigsberg crossing its bridges once and only once
Gauss can comb Poincaré's hairy balls
Gauss knows Alice and Bob's shared secret.
As a child, Gauss was instructed to sum the numbers from 1 to 100. He did this by summing the infinite series and then subtracting off every integer greater than 100, one by one, in his head.
Gauss once proved an axiom, but he didn't like it. So he disproved it.
Mass Effect 3 endings are good
<note warning>Warning: Spoilers for Mass Effect and Baldur's Gate (and possibly other cultural references) ahead.</note>
Foreword: My first playthrough is female Shepard (I liked the voice) romancing Liara (I liked her personality in ME1, both Ashley and Kaidan were so …). So don't get confused when I use both “I” and “her” despite me being male.
I've just finished Mass Effect 3 (with Extended Cut DLC) and tried all of its endings. After reading up on the contents of the Extended Cut DLC I understand dissatisfaction with continuity in the original endings and the final narrations definitely shifted several thing from just being silently implied to being explicit.
Beside that (I would say more technical problem), there are few things that enraged the fans. Lack of a “happy” ending, zero influence of the previous choices and a deus ex machina approach.
I'll start with the choices. Up until the final battle for Cerberus base the Shepard's choices significantly influence who gets to stay alive and shape the galaxy. Obviously not all are shown in the final movie, but throughout the story Shepard has the chance to eradicate or marginalize almost every species in the galaxy. So after the battle is done, the resulting power balance is her choice.
Personally, after Rannoch, I've decided that I would get the quarian admiralty court-martialed (or something) for this. After I create peace with the geth in ME2 they just had to go and attack them. And to top that off, they destroy an inert geth capital ship I could have used. This obviously isn't a part of the game but I consider this identification with the hero the core part of role-playing games.
Next the deus ex machina. After reading some blog posts I felt I like was the only one who saw it coming (improbable). Maybe it's because the amount of science-fiction I've read and seen or I just have similar way of thinking as the writers but after Sovereign said in ME1: “We are each a nation - independent, free of all weakness.” I had an idea what Reapers were, that turned out to be pretty accurate.
Sovereign is kind of a bigmouth but it reveals that it is synthetic and comprised of many individuals acting as one. Borgs, anyone? However when it talks about the cycle, it is presented as something that was imposed on the Reapers, because it's inevitable. Therefore someone else came up with it.
This was elevated to almost certainty at the end of ME2. The individual Reapers are the former species of the galaxy and the cycle is a way of reproduction – they then carry traits of the harvested species. This is also hinted by Sovereign in its speech as “and experience a true rebirth”. This would be a sufficient reason to continue with the cycle, but in the end, the origin of the first Reaper was also revealed. It was a functional solution to a wrong problem by a misguided AI – this feels like a classic theme, reminds me of Isaac Asimov and the Stargate series (as I said, a classic theme).
I don't feel that this is something that was arbitrarily glued on top of the story. It rather underlines the entire theme of senseless conflict. In fact I would say that the main storyline is a cheerful alternative of the one of the Battlestar Galactica series.
At first, Shepard considers both the Reapers and the geth to be just a very determined kind of toasters (with guns). And while Shepard's opinion may evolve, many remain stuck in this mentality. This eventually leads to a choice of a peaceful solution or an utter destruction of the synthetics.
And finally the “happy” part. I personally consider the three original endings quite fitting. The one I don't really like is the fourth, added one – choosing not to act and let the cycle continue is kind of pointless. The species of the next cycle would presumably succeed by choosing one of the three options, so why let everybody get killed in this cycle.
So as I've favored peaceful solutions throughout the game I also wouldn't choose the destruction ending – though Shepard achieves the original goal by destroying the Reapers (and the geth and EDI), this is unnecessary with the other options present. However the Extended Cut adds a potentially happy part to this too, as Shepard is shown to survive the blast (this is allowed, because Buffy survived her death twice and she wasn't a cyber-enhanced soldier 
).
The synthesis ending is kind of unsettling, but is it implied that Shepard becomes part of every living being in the galaxy this way. While it may seem strange to humans, it should be obvious why the Child prefers this solution – it means that its primary goal was achieved, with blurring distinction between the synthetic and the organic life, it is no longer possible for the synthetic life to destroy the organic life.
And finally my favorite ending – through taking control of the Reapers (and presumably also the Citadel) Shepard transcends mortality and (in an unusual way) survives despite being seriously wounded. This reminded me of the divine ending of the Baldur's Gate saga. In both games the protagonist is presented as ascending to immortality and leaving his love interest behind.
And in both games I consider this just an omission due to lack of imagination, because same as Forgotten Realms allow gods to have mortal avatars, the Mass Effect canon has shown that the controlling mind of a Reaper can have an avatar too – Saren was one and EDI/Eva proves that even a less technologically advanced cybernetic entity can do this and have a romantic relationship in this form.
So I would first secure my control over the remaining Reapers and withdraw them, then broadcast a message that it's me and everybody should stop shooting and finally get myself a temporary body (probably a vacant geth platform) and ship it to Normandy.
Day saved, Shepard gets the girl and also gets to be a literally immortal hero for the entire galaxy – what's not to like. Now I have at least another eight centuries to be with Liara (significant improvement over human lifespan) which I think is more than enough time to do the synthesis ending in a less violent fashion.
I think that while these available endings may seem like a sudden change of theme, they are not. All three games hinted at a bigger story. If the Reapers are synthetic, then someone must have created them. Without dealing with this, the ending would be as much incomplete and the ending of the first and second game. Someone was destroyed but it's not finished. Without revealing the origins and reasons behind the Reapers there would be a reasonable doubt that there is more of them.
Povaha čísel z hlediska filozofie
Vrátil jsem se zrovna z konference Československé sympozium k filozofické logice 2011 a po cestě mě napadl menší příspěvek týkající se povahy čísel:
K diskuzi o tom, zda jsou čísla individua v nějakém mimosvětě či pouze vlastnosti agregátů fyzických individuí (nebo čehokoliv jiného), bych chtěl poznamenat, že dnes již vcelku dobře neurologie ví, že myšlenky jsou reálnými fyzickými objekty - konkrétně vhodným uspořádáním iontů v neuronech mozku. Proces práce s těmito čísly, tedy například sčítání, se reálně provádí přesouváním náboje. Dovolím si dokonce tvrdit, že jakýkoliv jiný přístup můžeme považovat za možný pouze tehdy, pokud je schopen vysvětlit schopnost kalkulaček provádět tytéž procesy. Je nepochybné, že kalkulačka je schopna čísla sčítat, nedovolil by si jí ovšem přisoudit schopnost pracovat s pojmy či vlastnostmi agregátů (asi těžko při sčítání 2,8 + 0,2 kalkulačka někde skládá tři jablka či cokoliv jiného).
Toto bych dále rozvinul empirickým pozorováním, že ačkoliv operace s malými čísly jsme schopni provádět přímo (zde můžeme argumentovat, že ve skutečnosti nepočítáme, ale pouze si vzpomínáme na správnou hodnotu, kterou již známe), tak na mnohaciferných číslech se projevuje známá školní metoda počítání pod sebou. Nepracujeme tedy s čísly jako celky, ale s kolekcí číslic. V našem případě je to 0-9, v případě kalkulačky 0 a 1. Tímto se výrazně omezuje počet pojmů, se kterými se pracuje (z nekonečného počtu na počet konečný).
If you don't like labels...
Lately, it seems like more and more people on the internet “don't like labels”. I assume that's not really what the person meant, since (s)he is using language, which by definition consists mainly of labels. (Here I would like to except the people, who “don't like labels” as in “don't like prepositions” - that would be just a question of personal preference.)
As I see it, there are two possibilities (both not related to labels in general):
- You are being mislabeled and/or you don't know the correct label for yourself. So try describing yourself using label that is close and note the differences. It's very likely that others will understand the description correctly.
- There is a label that fits, but you're not happy about it. Change or get used to it. Everything has labels, simple or complicated, and that includes you. Even if the word changes, the meaning remains.
Or to be more blunt, if you don't like labels, the let me strike you from the list under the label “homo sapiens”.
PHP 5.3 mysqlnd, old-password directive and PASSWORD() trick
Today I faced one frustrating obstacle that made implementation of a 20-line PHP script into a 2 hour googling session.
I wanted to set up a new PHP project using classic combination of local Apache for day-to-day development, SVN, post-commit and shared hosting for client testing. Everything was OK, until I met a very confusing error message: “mysqlnd cannot connect to MySQL 4.1+ using old authentication”.
The root of the problem was that I use shared hosting database for my local copy. This arrangement usually worked very well, because at the end of the day both copies are identical and I really don't like to synchronize databases.
Unfortunately, the shared hosting runs on PHP 5.2.x, whereas I keep PHP on my workstation up to date. The problem is that the entire 5.3 version line is compiled with mysqlnd instead of libmysql and only works with “new” password hashes (present since MySQL 4.1, so not really that new). The shared hosting machine on the other hand uses old hashing.
Google helped and eventually it seemed that all I have to do is to set password to “new” hash.
SET PASSWORD FOR 'myuser'@'%' = PASSWORD('mypassword');
It seems though that this solution would be too easy. After some more googling and an experiment I realized that shared hosting has directive old-password in my.cnf set to true. Therefore both OLD_PASSWORD and PASSWORD functions generate old hash.
SELECT PASSWORD('mypassword'), OLD_PASSWORD('mypassword');
Then I realized that SET PASSWORD lets me set the internal password hash column to any string value. In other words, I don't need to use PASSWORD in the command function to get the right hash. I then used my local MySQL instance to generate “new” hash and set it directly:
SET PASSWORD FOR 'myuser'@'%' = '*FABE5482D5AADF36D028AC443D117BE1180B9725';
Problem solved.
