In a drunken stupor of sleep depravity and alcohol poisoning, early this morning I was curious about the non number opposite of finite, the idea or entity we ascribe to the unfathomable reaches of mathematics. I really wish I could remember my line of thought more clearly, because I had a very strong argument for the case of some ridiculous conclusion or another. But still the same, there is a very interesting train of logic (both fallacy and truth) that, uhm, well, uhh, just keep in mind that this is all very interesting
Douglas Adams wrote an interesting reasoning that involved infinity as well. I will butcher this badly but here it goes: Regarding the population of the universe, we cannot count every living thing individually, so we must resort to relying on statistics in some form or another as to make a guess. If we come up with an average population for a planet then we can say that the population for the universe is that average number multiplied by the number of planets and viola (prononced Vee-Oh-La), we have a population of the universe. So, the average popultion would be equal to the sum of the populations of each planet divided by the number of planets. But since the universe is infinite in size, and any number divided by infinity is as close to zero as make no odds, the average population is therefore zero, so multiplying whatever by zero is also zero, ergo nothing exists in the universe and anyone or anything you might see are the result of a deranged imagination.
This, of course, is a total misuse and misapplication of both logic, math, and that deranged imagination. But this is either where my mind started from this morning, or ended, or just stopped by for a beer, but it really isn't all that important. What is important is when you start to explore infinite, neverending, gargantuan, hugeness, by using it to make things small. Calculus students might remember taking limits of crap as some figure went to infinity, or zero, which ever was more useful to the teacher at the moment. You might have fully understood what was going on, roughly had the concept, or you just figured that since one component of the equation was going to be hard to mess with it was probably going to disapear just because it wanted to sacrifice it's existence merely to make you feel better. But who cares?
Let's see here. Let us say we have this number. We'll call it I. And I is roughly infinity, but to avoid pissing anyone off, it's not quite infinity. We'll just think of it as infinity's slightly lessor brother. We want to create a system of arithmatic aroung this I character. We'd like to have an additive inverse. Easy, -I. Ok, so I + -I = 0. Now, we need a multiplicative inverse. With real numbers, for a given a the multiplicative inverse is a-1, so the m inverse of I should be I-1, right? And IxI-1=1, right? Ok, infinity's slightly smaller sister has an inverse that is I-1 which is also 1/I which if you think about it, is roughly equal to zero, since one part of something chopped up an infinite (or damn near infinite) number of times is so damn close to nothing as, again, makes no odds. So, B>Ix0=1. So, since we have decided that there is a number, that when multiplied by zero (this number being either roughly infinity, or infinity itself) actually doesn't become zero, we have proved the old dirty arithmetic teachers wrong, and have shed new light on Doug's line of reasoning.
To conclude; the average population of the planets in the universe, Pavg, is equal to the sum of the populations of all the planets, Ptotal divided by the number of planets, I. Pavg = Ptotal/I = Ptotal x I-1 = Ptotal x 0 and since there are an infinite number of creatures in the universe, simply because there are an infinite number of planets, and therefore an infinite number of inhabitable planets, or at least damn neer an infinite number of creatures, we have I x 0 = 1 and so only you really exist. Which, doug pointed out in his discourse, just with a smaller amount of rigor.
You might have noticed that I switched from being infinity's little brother to being the little sister in that fourth paragraph. You might find that odd, and accuse me of being pro-trans-gender, but you'd be wrong. What happened was evidence of the nature of infinity as described by a young child first learning of it and not truly grasping the concept of it, and also the philisophical ideas of the nature of gender in general. First, one might consider the number 1 to be somewhat masculine and the number 2 as feminine. And the more you consider what gender a given number might be more often than not, even numbers tend to seem like girls, at least to me. If you disagree, tell me about it, but that really doesn't matter for this argument. Anyway, one might go on to conclude that numbers alternate in gender (which is only important when one wants to use a noun to describe something, where that noun has a gender issue (but in reality, I could just as easily have said little sibling, now that I think about it ( so I might as well break out of these parenthesis and forget this paragraph ever happened (but I'm not sure if I want to use a BASIC type statement to escape (not that I like spaggetti code, but this isn't code so it does really matter) or if I want to use a C type statement) and so, let's do that.
return 0;
/* this code never executes */
printf("%s, the return statement failed!\n", username);
}
I don't get these kind of emails very often, because the people who actually have my Yahoo emails tend to be fearful of my wrath, or at least educatedly polite. However, I have friends who have friends that are either complete morons or just ignorant. If you are one of these people, and have been directed here by one of my friends, don't worry; you're just ignorant. If you were a moron, you probably would have been told such rather than pointed here.
So, you're here. You've either surfed in upon regular channels or have been implicitly directed here. What we have here is an exemplary chain letter. It's absolute rubbish from start to finish and exposes the recipients' confidential information to quite a few people he or she may not know. Now, you may or may not understand why I say confidential information when you look at this email, so to clarify: your email address should be confidential. If you give your email to strangers, you are quite simply asking for spam. But I digress.
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 14:06:23 -0800 (PST)
From: Jessica <<Censored>@yahoo.com>
Subject: Fwd: YAHOO IS CLOSING DOWN!!
To: heather <Censored>@yahoo.com>,
Crystal <Censored>@yahoo.com>,
Destin <Censored@yahoo.com>,
Lesli <Censored@yahoo.com>,
Lisa <Censored@yahoo.com>,
maria <Censored@yahoo.com>,
etc.....
Note: forwarded message attached.
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Personals
Skip the bars and set-ups and
start using Yahoo! Personals for free
Ok, first off, CC or carbon copy is a bad idea. There are certain situations where it is actually good and useful, but it is not if the people you are carbon copying do not know each other. Just a rule of thumb. Actually, it can be hurtful to a recipient if say Crystal over there knows Maria, but dislikes her. She now has Maria's email and subscribe her to lists, or email bomb her or any number of other nasty harrasments. Anyway, moving forward.
> Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 11:59:42 -0800 (PST)
> From: Brianna <Censored@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Fwd: YAHOO IS CLOSING DOWN!!
> To: Anthony <Censored@yahoo.com>,
> Michael <Censored@yahoo.com>,
> Heather <Censored@yahoo.com>,
> JR <Censored@yahoo.com>,
> Jeremy <Censored@yahoo.com>,
> Jo <Censored@yahoo.com>,
> Jake <Censored@yahoo.com>,
> Margaret <Censored@yahoo.com>,
etc...
>
> Note: forwarded message attached.
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! DSL Something to write home
> about. Just $16.99/mo. or less
What's funny here is the fact that this segment here has been forwarded, and the person forwarding it has sent it to people who recieved it in the same mass email as her! I suppose you can't actually see this since I have edited the addresses for brevity and privacy, but trust me she did. And so did the person who sent her the mass email, and the person who sent the mail before that, and so on. Four levels back either A) the chain mail was started or B) one of the idiots (or ignorant people) who helped pass this crap on had some simple decency to strip off some of the headers that keep getting passed on.
> Dear YAHOO User,
>
> Because of the sudden rush of people
> signing up to YAHOO, it has come to
> our attention that we are vastly running
> out of resources. So, within a month's
> time, anyone who does not receive
> this email with the exact subject
> heading, will be deleted off our server.
> Please forward this email so that we
> know you are still using this account.
> We want to find out which users are
> actually using their YAHOO accounts.
> So if you are using your account,
> please pass this e-mail to every
> YAHOO user that you can and IF
> YOU DO NOT PASS this letter to
> anyone we will delete your account.
>
> From Mr. ALLEN SMITH
> YAHOO Admin. Dept.
>
You should easily identify this email as bogus, but if you don't, here are some clues: This Mr. Smith incorrectly uses the company name (It's Yahoo! not YAHOO), Mr. Smith uses bad Inglish ("vastly running out of..."?? What?), and his technical explanation is cantradictory to itself. First he says anyone without the message in their account will be deleted, and later he says that anyone who doesn't send the message will be deleted. By the way, if Yahoo! were planning to exert the computational power to determine if either a person has the email in their account or has sent it to anyone in order to determine account activity, they might find it simpler to check their logs to see whether a user has logged in recently!
>
> Our YAHOO system is getting to
> crowded!! We need you to forward
> this to at least 20 people. I know this
> seems like a large number, but we
> need to find out who is really using
> their account. If you do not send this
> to at least 10 YAHOO members, we
> will delete your account. Sorry for
> this inconvenience.
>
> Sincerely, Director of YAHOO Services
> BOB LOPEZ
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Music Unlimited - Access over
> 1 million songs. Try it free.
Hey Bob! Your Inglish is to horrible! You need too learn prepositions better. C'mon, if the director of YAHOO Services doesn't know the difference between to and too, why the hello would they have him write such an apparently important email that needs to reach every active Yahoo! user? Oh, and wouldn't they allow him to send email without tacking on the ad?!?
Ok, so I've been bashing the people who fowarded this crap, and the person who really created it in the first place. I hate chain mail. I generally send chain mail to the same bit bucket as spam. Some pathetic waste of life somewhere is just getting excited that he or she can have his/her words passed around and seen by dozens of scores of people who don't know who he or she is. And they tell a friend and they tell a friend, like I said, a waste. Sometimes, chain letters are funny, and I agree that they are fun to pass on, like the perspective art emails, or joke emails, but when they say crap like "Send this to 10 people and blah blah blah" I feel like kicking someone in the head.
But I want you to learn something, so here are some things for you to remember:
Don't use CC If you want to forward some exciting peice of trash to a bunch of people, show them some respect; use BCC if your client supports it (and the Yahoo! web mail interface does) or mail them individual copies (which is what BCC does, but automated).
Clean your forwards You shouldn't have to scroll down through eight pages of headers to see the new "Priceless" picture. And if you like your friend enough to send him a copy of the girl inadvertently and unknowingly exposing her beaver, you should like him enough not to barrage him with the email addresses of the eight hundred people who got it before him. Plus, you can feel good about protecting the privacy of those eight hundred people, what little you actually did.
Yahoo! is not going to delete your account if you don't forward emails In fact, you probably won't win anything from Bill Gates by forwarding an email, nor will you prevent the end of the Internet, nor will you have a better sex life, nor any of the other promises or threats written in these emails. Hey, if an email is funny, pass it on! But don't pass it on because the thing offers or threatens something.
Respect Your Friends' Privacy Don't give your friends' email addresses to other people. Your friends have entrusted you with access to their mailboxes to contact them. Don't give that sensitive information away to just anyone. Remember, nice people aren't the only people who receive these multi-forwarded messages. Spammers love harvesting dozens and scores of active email addresses from these types of email.
So, hopefully you have learned something. Most likely not, but I tried.
As it turns out, extraction is interesting, but not all that efficient when you realize that certain vendors will give you the information without so much hassle. Take amazon.com for example; one can use their web API to retrieve information about books, movies, etc, on the fly. All one needs to do is keep track of ISBNs (or ASINs) that the user will like to have cataloged. Other data about those items can (and might should) be stored locally, but a user would find it easier to simply put in an ID for their newly purchased item, and have the data retrieved.
Of course, what most people have been using this for is only to earn commisions through their website, but some people have written programs to perform this function without regard to web browsers. Nice but I will approach it the other way. A catalog of owned movies, then eventually I will add code that recommends titles based on current inventory, and provide a means to purchase such recomendations.
Now, if there's someone who want's to pay me to develop this, the project will develop quite a bit faster and you will get to use it sooner. I will too. But, soon I will publish a specification sheet here that will outline this projects goals, short term, long term, etc. Of course, if you pay attention to my posts here you might notice that soon is synonymous with "later", "when I feel like it", and in some cases, "never".
God damn it, mother fucker son of a bitch. I worked really hard to get google adsense to display non-blog related advertisements. I wanted ads relating to computer sciencey type crap, like DBs, web scripting, IP, y'know, shit that isn't on half a billion other blogs. I make one god damn post that uses that evil word three times, concentrated in a small area in the post, whilst the rest of the post was about something totally different, and look at the fucking ads google sends me now! Cock suckers. Do they really believe that such ads are in the best interest of anyone involved? My readers needs aren't met: if they needed a blog reader, they wouldn't be viewing my site, and if they had not already a blog had, surely they could get one from a billion other places rather than through my site. Since my readers aren't going to benefit, I won't because they aren't going to click on it. And if they don't click on it, google doesn't benefit, and neither does the poor bastard paying for the ad. Any clicks on it are probably just going to be sympathy clicks. Fuck em.
So, now that I've only added to the problem, in as much as that the crawlers google uses will still think those are the best targeted ads for this site, since I said blog twice last paragraph and twice here, I might as well regress and bitch about some other blog related bullshit. "You're site is very very interesting" is officially the lamest comment I have received here. No, not because of the use of the double adverb. Not because the commenter used the same adverb. Not because "You're" is a noun-verb conjunction, and not the possesive adjective he/she desired. Not because the sentence "Your site is interesting" doesn't really say anything since "interesting" is ambiguous in this phrase (interesting as in fun to read or interesting as in demented or interesting as in the subject matter is of great concern or et c....). No no no. I can actually tolerate most of that crap. Well, I'm lying now. I can tolerate that as long as there is something more henious to dislike. This was commented on several of my posts. Eight different posts. Posts that are buried back several pages. Posts that I would not have noticed new comments on if it were not for the low volume of comments I receive and the fact that blogdrive shows the last ten comments on the management panel. Posts that desevered a better, a more thought out response. Oh yes, I almost forgot. All eight comments were made within a half hour. Could this person have really read all eight of those posts, understood the material, commented in such a distinguished and unique way, all in a half hour?!?
So, let's say you are a regular reader of this site. Let's say I have built repoire with you and can talk to you as a friend. Have you ever used RentACoder? I found it in my endless search for a job, and thought, "What the hell? I could write some simple scripts, help some kids with homework, and maybe take on a large project with this." Of course, I have to have a decent rating on RAC to win any bids, but I can't get a rating without completeling some jobs, and I can't complete any jobs if I don't win some bids. Fuckers. A guy made a bid request a few days ago regarding a chat program he wrote for his website. From what I gathered, it was basically similar to the live tag boards alot of bl*gs have these days. He was having problems losing some messages, so when I made my bid offer I offered only to help him figure out what was happening to the lost messages and help fix the problem. I mean, that would be all I would want if it was my project. Of course, the contract went to someone else for $300. Go fucking figure.
Now, who wants to bitch at me about my horrible language skills?
My name is Will Wesley. I hold a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Franlklin University in Columbus, OH. My interests, in addition to Computer Science, include Math, Physics, Electronics, Automotive (customization, repair, and driving), and language. I support freedom. I detest people who wish to impose their will upon other people. I hate people that cannot form their own opinions and mindlessly accept what they are told.
I currently live with my beautiful wife, in Greeley, CO. This blog is dedicated to a DB application I have developed to keep track of my movie collection. There is two goals with this; first I will be taking the time to drop nuggets of the application here, in hopes of developing a better structure for the app, and secondly to show my experiences as a coder. There are a couple of secondary goals in this as well, but you probably don't care about them.
I don't get these kind of emails very often, because the people who actually have my Yahoo emails tend to be fearful of my wrath, or at least educatedly polite. However, I have friends who have friends that are either complete morons or just ignorant. If you are one of these people, and have been directed here by one of my friends, don't worry; you're just ignorant. If you were a moron, you probably would have been told such rather than pointed here.
that isn't on half a billion other blogs. I make one god damn post that uses that evil word three times, concentrated in a small area in the post, whilst the rest of the post was about something totally different, and look at the fucking ads google sends me now! Cock suckers. Do they really believe that such ads are in the best interest of anyone involved? My readers needs aren't met: if they needed a blog reader, they wouldn't be viewing my site, and if they had not already a blog had, surely they could get one from a billion other places rather than through my site. Since my readers aren't going to benefit, I won't because they aren't going to click on it. And if they don't click on it, google doesn't benefit, and neither does the poor bastard paying for the ad. Any clicks on it are probably just going to be sympathy clicks. Fuck em.