If you do video editing on Windows XP, don't install the DirectX 8 SDK. It appears to install a debug version of the libraries (I think, most importantly, quartz.dll) that screws up, at the very least, ULead MediaStudio Pro and Scenalyzer. Probably other video editing software, too, because I …
more ...Grrr... my optimization example is suddenly not showing major differences between steps 1 and 2 (which should be showing about a 40% speedup).
more ...Ever since I've come back from PNG, I've been trying to finalize the book. So far, this has been formatting and making sure that the programs run as directed. All I can think of, though, is how much I want to go back to PNG. Argh!
more ...Saw Rivers and Tides last night, a documentary on the environmental artist (as in, site specific art) Andy Goldsworthy. It's an exceptional documentary about an exceptional artist. It's incredibly rare for a major artist to come across in a documentary in an approachable manner. I guess the movie will not …
more ...A review of A New Kind of Science in New Scientist makes the excellent point that one of the huge problems with it is that it doesn't make disprovable claims. One thing that's been interesting is that the reviews of ANKoS have been quite mild, while its flaws are obvious …
more ...Wolfram's A New Kind of Science is execrable. It's 1100 pages based on a point that everyone interested in the subject already knew: simple cellular automata can have arbitrarily complex behavior. Given that CAs and Turing Machines are the particle accelerators of computer science, and given the heavy buzz related …
more ...ad.doubleclick.net crashes my Internet Explorer. I think I may have once done some manipulation so that doubleclick.net resolves to the localhost, so what may be happening is that ad.doubleclick.net is trying to resolve to a more specific machine that localhost, timeout, etc.
more ...A Turing machine moving across a tape can also be seen as a triangle of possible cells being occupied / set into a definite state on a plane, a la the evolution of a cellular automata. Hmmm...
more ...I've been thinking about P != NP lately. I think the recent advances in thermodynamics of computation give the insight to solve it. Basically, my thought is that if you can characterizes P and NP problems in terms of area (or more specifically, growth), you can apply physical constraints (notably C …
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