Relativity

The theory appeared to me then, and it still does, the greatest feat of human thinking about nature, the most amazing combination of philosophical penetration, physical intuition, and mathematical skill…  It appealed to me like a great work of art …

— Max Born

2012.06.14 Thursday ACHK

The why of love, 2.1.3

軟硬智力 7.1.3

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How to answer this kind of questions:

Why am I so stupid?

It is not a valid question. It is not the case that there is a pre-existing “I”, to which we can assign some qualities such as stupidity. Instead, I am the sum of all my qualities, including the quality of being stupid.

— Me@2011.10.18

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This kind of questions are like

Why does a triangle have three angles?

To be not stupid, the correct approach should be,

I am stupid. So I have to change my ‘I’ in order to be not stupid.

Although you cannot change the number of angles of a triangle, you can change the figure itself, replacing it with a rectangle.

— Me@2011.10.18

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2012.06.14 Thursday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

觀我者誰 1.2

這段改編自 2010 年 3 月 20 日的對話。

寫作,是觀察「多重自我」的一個極佳方法。

一方面,「文章」就是凝固了的思想。自我凝固了,自然較為容易觀察研究。

另一方面,寫文章的結構是,由 不同性格、不同層次 和 不同時間 的自我,合作做同一件事。他們互相爭論,大打出手,直到最終達成共識,才能化成文字。寫文章是「多重自我」的行動中,最為複雜的其中一種。

所以,透過觀察自己寫作的過程和成果,你就可以較為了解自己的「多重自我」。

例如,「現在的我」和「過去的我」性格不大相同,可以視為不同的「自我」。有時,「現在的我」閱讀「過去的我」的文章時,感覺有如正在閱讀另一個人的文章一樣。那就是「多重自我」的一個顯現。

— Me@2012.06.14 

2012.06.14 Thursday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

The Time Ships

The Time Ships is a 1995 science fiction novel by Stephen Baxter. A sequel to The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, it was officially authorized by the Wells estate to mark the centenary of the original’s publication. It won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the Philip K. Dick Award in 1996, as well as the British Science Fiction Association Award in 1995. It was also nominated for the Hugo, Clarke, and Locus Awards in 1996.

— Wikipedia on The Time Ships

2012.06.13 Wednesday ACHK

反不相關推薦 1.1

閱讀理解 1.4.1

這段改編自 2010 年 6 月 2 日的對話。

記住,無論是什麼科目,無論是在考試中,還是現實生活,答問題時,你除了要保證你答的東西是正確的,還要保證它們和問題直接相關。否則,你的答案就是正確而不相關,簡稱「離題」。你不單會徒勞無功,一分也拿不到,還會顯示自己無知,給予人一個壞印象。

我中學時的一位英文老師,講過他大學時有一位教授,曾經教過他一道絕招,如何透過寫「推薦信」來害人。

我現在把它講出來,並不是叫你去害人,而是教你避免被人害。更加重要的是,你要避免自己害自己。大部人是的情況是,自己害了自己也不知道,誤了自己一生也不察覺,而且還要以為自己做得很好。

— Me@2012.06.13

2012.06.13 Wednesday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

Information lost, 3.2

Information conservation

There is another very subtle law of physics that may be even more fundamental than energy conservation.

It’s sometimes called reversibility, but let’s just call it information conservation.

Information conservation implies that if you know the present with perfect precision, you can predict the future for all time.

But that’s only half of it. It also says that if you know the present, you can be absolutely sure of the past. It goes in both directions.

— The Black Hole War, p.87

— Leonard Susskind

2012.06.12 Tuesday ACHK

The why of love, 2.1.2

軟硬智力 7.1.2

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How to answer this kind of questions:

Why am I so stupid?

It is not a valid question. It is not the case that there is a pre-existing “I”, to which we can assign some qualities such as stupidity. Instead, I am the sum of all my qualities, including the quality of being stupid.

— Me@2011.10.18

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If you do not believe me, imagine who am “I”, without all my qualities.

In other words, after deleting all my qualities, what would remain for “I”?

— Me@2011.10.18

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2012.06.12 Tuesday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

觀我者誰 1.1

「Windows XP」是一個作業系統程式。但是,這一個大程式,其實是由很多個小程式組合而成。程式之間,有時合作愉快,令到電腦運行暢順;有時互相衝突,導致電腦定期失靈。

同理,每個人的所謂「一個」自我,其實都是由「多重自我」組合而成。

(安:那樣,我怎樣可以觀察到,腦中的其他「自我」呢?)

留意,你是由「多重自我」組成的。所以,並沒有所謂的「其他」自我。所有「其他」的自我,其實都是「你」(的其他部分)。

觀察「多重自我」,同觀察其他人的方法一樣。觀察其他人,其實就是觀察他們的行動。同理,你只要觀察心中「其他」自我的行動,就等如觀察「多重自我」。

— Me@2012.06.12 

2012.06.12 Tuesday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

Everything is a file

“Everything is a file” describes one of the defining features of Unix, and its derivatives — that a wide range of input/output resources such as documents, directories, hard-drives, modems, keyboards, printers and even some inter-process and network communications are simple streams of bytes exposed through the filesystem name space.

The advantage of this approach is that the same set of tools, utilities and APIs can be used on a wide range or resources. There are a number of file types. When a file is opened a file descriptor is created. The file path becoming the addressing system and the file descriptor being the byte stream I/O interface. But file descriptors are also created for things like anonymous pipes and network sockets via different methods. So it is more accurate to say “Everything is a file descriptor”.

— Wikipedia on Everything is a file

2012.06.11 Monday ACHK

Google Quickoffice

superxor 3 days ago | link

I once used Quickoffice on a Symbian S60 phone. I should say, it’s capabilities were pretty impressive. Especially with the meager resources available on those old so-called smart phones.

I hope this helps Google build better native Office apps. Obviously, will also be a big addition to their Docs back-end. But it has always puzzled me, with the infinite resources Google has, it still has not been able to develop a seamless import of MS Office files. Is it really that hard?

   
hesdeadjim 3 days ago | link

Having worked at Quickoffice years ago on the spreadsheet team, I can tell you that yes, it is really, really hard to do well.

People expect when they open their spreadsheet that the formulas they wrote on the desktop will provide the results they see on the desktop. Ok, well it’s just math right? Yes, and no. Excel actually has a lot of bugs with the execution of their formulas, so to be accurate you have to emulate all the mistakes they make. You also have to discover these bugs yourself, as they are not conveniently documented somewhere.

I ended up writing a unit test framework using generated Excel spreadsheets containing permutations of formulas with every possible input, just so I could identify where these bugs might be happening. Then you have to reverse engineer WHY they happen in the first place, and also find out if this was something the Excel team fixed in later releases, or left in because they themselves could not break backwards compatibility.

And this was what I would consider a small problem for us back then. The biggest problem was always round-tripping of unsupported data. The Office file format is large, complex, and full of crap you wouldn’t imagine supporting in a mobile product. However, your users expect that if they open a spreadsheet to change a number on their phone, when they save it and re-open it on the desktop all the fancy formatting and pivot tables still work and haven’t been lost.

Anyways, this is a great purchase for Google and I congratulate all the guys who have put in the hard work to make Quickoffice the amazing product it is today.

— Hacker News

2012.06.09 Saturday ACHK

閱讀理解 1.3.3

這段改編自 2010 年 6 月 2 日的對話。

最不幸的情況是,上司既不肯給予明確的指示,又不肯容許你自由選擇。換句話說,無論你做什麼,他也不可能會滿意。那樣,你就早應該另謀高就,尋找合理的上司。

至於公開試,出現這個情況的機會微乎其微。大概不會有一科,無論你怎樣作答,也拿不到合格分數。即使有,你也毋須擔心。如果那是選修科,你就可以一早退修。如果那是必修科,所有考生都要面對。你並不會因為該科,而特別處於劣勢。

— Me@2012.06.09

2012.06.09 Saturday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

The why of love, 2.3

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

— Winston Churchill

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change = delete the old one + create a new one

— Me@2010.11.28

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It is difficult to change oneself because it is to change not just some qualities, but also the very definition of oneself. It is to change the identity.

You have to give up part of your original self in order to become a better one.

— Me@2012.06.08

— Me@2022-11-26

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2012.06.08 Friday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on “high tech and low life.” The name was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story “Cyberpunk,” published in 1983. It features advanced science, such as information technology and cybernetics, coupled with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order. Cyberpunk works are well situated within postmodern literature.

Cyberpunk stories have also been seen as fictional forecasts of the evolution of the Internet. The earliest descriptions of a global communications network came long before the World Wide Web entered popular awareness, though not before traditional science-fiction writers such as Arthur C. Clarke and some social commentators such as James Burke began predicting that such networks would eventually form.

— Wikipedia on Cyberpunk

2012.06.07 Thursday ACHK

pLaY, 2

玩 = play = 角色扮演

— Me@2012-06-04 10:53:35 AM

2012.06.07 Thursday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK