One of the annoying things that old school Artificial Intelligence researchers have to deal with is the fact that simple brute force is such a daunting foe. Back in the dawn era of the field, attempts to replicate human thought processes used deductive reasoning, symbolic representation, and incremental learning to solve problems.
As an example, look […]

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Not understanding some basic rules of mathematics or logic can be a problem if you are a computer programmer. It can stand in the way of a good solution to a problem, or worse yet, can cause you to spend a lot of time working on a dead end.
In the case of New Zealand developer […]

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You may have never heard of Vinay Deolalikar, but there is a chance that he may become next year’s Turing Award winner, not to mention an overnight millionaire. It seems that Vinay dropped the news at the start of this week that he had proven that P does not equal NP. In short, this proof […]

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Back in 1981, fresh out of school, I was awestruck by Steve Wozniak’s program that calculated over 100,000 digits of e on an Apple II. (Anyone who has a scan of his article in the June 1981 issue of Byte, please email me a copy!) Shortly after reading the article, I ported his program to […]

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The Pigeonhole Principle, also referred to as the Counting Theorem, is a handy tool for mathematicians, and naturally, computer programmers.
The loose version of this principle says “After placing n pigeons into m compartments, if n is greater than m, you will find that some compartment must contain more than one pigeon.”
Seems obvious, and perhaps it […]

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This isn’t the first time I’ve complained about innumeracy, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Just to get off on the right foot, let me give the definition of the word from thesite innumeracy.com:
A term meant to convey a person’s inability to make sense of the numbers that run their lives. Innumeracy was […]

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Slate has a regular piece called Explainer, subtitled “Answers to your questions about the news.”
A while back, they apparently lost their Explainer and asked for applications for a replacement. As part of the application, they requested that you submit a list of 10 sample questions to be explained.
Now, I have no real general journalism […]

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Yes, another middle manager in my organization has decided to part ways with my employer, Cisco Systems, Inc. Dave Corley has been a key part of Cisco since he was acquired along with the rest of Selsius in 1998. He’s now giving us a friendly handshake and showing himself out after just shy of 10 […]

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Read over your compositions, and where ever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out – Samuel Johnson

Monday, November 17, 2008 8:00 AM
Good morning ladies and gentlemen. My name is Maxine Perkins and for the next six weeks, I will be either your best friend or your worst enemy.
Most […]

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Apple is in the middle of a minor fuss right now over their use of software updates as a promotional device. It turns out that if you are a Windows user with a copy of iTunes, Apple’s update process does its best to get you to install a copy of their web browser, Safari, […]

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