CONTEST Instant Harmonic Karma™

CONTEST
Most supernatural constructs offer polarity to account for contrast. Is that not the case with karma? Only negative feedback?

Well in that case, think of me as karmalizing karma. Someone had to add the missing pole, thereby producing Harmonic Karma (my next song title).
 
I got a notification from this thread but I've never seen it before. How deep is this cult that I watch threads without realizing it?
Whatever, I just enjoy not winning contests.

Speaking of karma.

At my high school graduation exam, or as we call it in Italy the "maturity exam", I was wearing a Primus t-shirt.
Right before my waterboard...ahem oral exam, the external member of the commission, i.e. a high school teacher from out of town, approached me and told me he hated the band and that I'd fail with that T-shirt on. He proceeded to grill me real hard, thwarting any chance I had to get honors.

What a sad little person that guy is. I hope karma is real :)
 
andare said:
I got a notification from this thread but I've never seen it before. How deep is this cult that I watch threads without realizing it?
Whatever, I just enjoy not winning contests.

Speaking of karma.

At my high school graduation exam, or as we call it in Italy the "maturity exam", I was wearing a Primus t-shirt.
Right before my waterboard...ahem oral exam, the external member of the commission, i.e. a high school teacher from out of town, approached me and told me he hated the band and that I'd fail with that T-shirt on. He proceeded to grill me real hard, thwarting any chance I had to get honors.

What a sad little person that guy is. I hope karma is real :)
Click to expand...

I bet he's way into mid 90's Eric Clapton.
 
Speaking of random numbers, I'm old enough to remember when computers, well, not when they "first came out" but with they were first becoming mainstream, and getting a "random number" out of one was always a matter of programming... and frequently the random number wasn't so random... I wondered if the state of the art had changed, and while this article is a bit old, it still looks like we're fighting the same issues, though there are some ideas...

engineering.mit.edu

Archives: Ask an Engineer

engineering.mit.edu engineering.mit.edu

Can a computer generate a truly random number?​

It depends what you mean by random…

By Jason M. Rubin
“One thing that traditional computer systems aren’t good at is coin flipping,” says Steve Ward, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. “They’re deterministic, which means that if you ask the same question you’ll get the same answer every time. In fact, such machines are specifically and carefully programmed to eliminate randomness in results. They do this by following rules and relying on algorithms when they compute.”

You can program a machine to generate what can be called “random” numbers, but the machine is always at the mercy of its programming. “On a completely deterministic machine you can’t generate anything you could really call a random sequence of numbers,” says Ward, “because the machine is following the same algorithm to generate them. Typically, that means it starts with a common ‘seed’ number and then follows a pattern.” The results may be sufficiently complex to make the pattern difficult to identify, but because it is ruled by a carefully defined and consistently repeated algorithm, the numbers it produces are not truly random. “They are what we call ‘pseudo-random’ numbers,” Ward says.

For most applications, a pseudo-random number is sufficient, he adds. “For example, if you want to do a random sampling of a large set of data, you’ll need numbers to feed into the program so that the samples are more or less evenly distributed. Using pseudo-random numbers is perfectly acceptable in this case because there’s no quantitative advantage in the degree of randomness.” Similarly, a CD player in “random” mode is probably really playing in pseudo-random mode, with a pattern that is discernible if you listen carefully enough.

Not all randomness is pseudo, however, says Ward. There are ways that machines can generate truly random numbers. And the importance of true randomness is not to be underestimated, he adds. “If you go to an online poker site, for example, and you know the algorithm and seed, you can write a program that will predict the cards that are going to be dealt.” Truly random numbers make such reverse engineering impossible, he adds. There are devices that generate numbers that claim to be truly random. They rely on unpredictable processes like thermal or atmospheric noise rather than human-defined patterns. The results might still be slightly biased towards higher numbers or even numbers, but they’re not generated by a deterministic algorithm.
Click to expand...
 
  • Like
Reactions: fig
Fingolfen said:
Speaking of random numbers, I'm old enough to remember when computers, well, not when they "first came out" but with they were first becoming mainstream, and getting a "random number" out of one was always a matter of programming... and frequently the random number wasn't so random... I wondered if the state of the art had changed, and while this article is a bit old, it still looks like we're fighting the same issues, though there are some ideas...

engineering.mit.edu

Archives: Ask an Engineer

engineering.mit.edu engineering.mit.edu
Click to expand...

So you’re saying this whole “instant karma” thread is a sham?…
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top