The data rate (typically web browsing) set by cell phone company Verizon Wireless is 1.5 cents per kilobyte here in California. The text messaging rate is 20 cents per message, regardless of actual message length. Since an SMS text message has a maximum size of 160 characters and one SMS character equals seven bits (7/8 byte) of information, the cost per byte of a text message ranges from 0.143 cents per byte for a full message, to 22.857 cents per byte for a one-character message. Expanded to kilobytes, that's $1.46-$234.06 to send a kilobyte of SMS messages. How in the world does this company continue to sell text messages at a rate that's 97 to 15,600 times(!!) what they charge for the identical transfer of data?

(1.5 cents/KB) / (1024 B/KB * 8 b/B)              = 0.000183 cents/bit (data rate)
(20 cents/(160 7-bit chars)) = 20 cents/1120 bits = 0.01786  cents/bit (lowest msg rate)
(20 cents/(1 7-bit char)) = 20 cents/7 bits       = 2.857    cents/bit (highest msg rate)

Notes: I don't know if this rate differs across the U.S., and I'm sure it's different when you get to other countries. I know there are plans that offer unlimited free text messages to other Verizon customers, but my point still stands for other users. SMS usually uses the GSM 7-bit alphabet, though it can also use 8-bit encoding with 140 character messages or 16-bit with 70 characters - they all carry the same amount of data.

Tomorrow, March 17, marks the second anniversary of the start of The Show, a cult hit video podcast by Ze Frank. The show ran five days a week for one year, as scheduled from the start. Most episodes of the show are two to five minutes long and focus on quickfire news, social or political commentary, a monologue to the viewer, or some form of ridiculous humor. The newsy episodes can aptly be compared to Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. Some episodes have singing, some episodes have ducks.

Here are a few samples I grabbed if you want to check out the show. I don't know the best way to put into words how funny I find Ze, without sounding like a baseless advertising pitch. Hopefully the samples will do him justice.

I should mention that The Show isn't really intended for young children. Most of the episodes have some kind of vulgarity in them.

03-22-06 News: metabolite, q-tips, superheroes
09-13-06 Picking a major
02-22-07 Phobias

Regular expressions are a string-matching tool used in programming. They can be used to find patterns of text in a larger body, or to break down a line of text into component parts.

/^(\d{1,2})?[dD](\d+)((\s?\+\s?)(\d+))?/

The slashes at the outside simply mean that this is a regular expression. The programming language interpreter or compiler will look at these and know where the expression starts and ends.

/^(\d{1,2})?[dD](\d+)((\s?\+\s?)(\d+))?/

The caret means that this phrase occurs at the start of a line. If there are any letters, numbers or words before it, it won't match. Only the start.

/^(\d{1,2})?[dD](\d+)((\s?\+\s?)(\d+))?/

Okay, let's break this part down further.

(\d{1,2})?

The parentheses declare this as a set. One important feature this has is allowing us to refer back to it later. If the text we're testing matches the regular expression, the part that fits this set will be stored in its own variable.

The question mark at the end means that there can be zero or one of these sets in this position. So it can be there or not be there, and still match the expression. A common example of where you might see this is in words that have different US and UK spellings. colo u? r matches whether the u is there or not, so it works for color and colour.

(\d{1,2})?

\d is a decimal number, 0 to 9. The {1,2} next to it means 1 digit or 2. So this part matches a number from 0 to 99.

/^(\d{1,2})?[dD](\d+)((\s?\+\s?)(\d+))?/

Square brackets mean a literal match. No variables, no funny business; This matches a lowercase d or a capital D. Since there are no modifiers after the set, it matches only one letter. (Modifiers like the ? you saw, and also the + coming up.)

/^(\d{1,2})?[dD](\d+)((\s?\+\s?)(\d+))?/

We've got another set and another decimal inside. But this decimal has a "+" after it instead of a {1,2} notation. The + means at least 1 digit and no maximum. This number can be as large as you want.

/^(\d{1,2})?[dD](\d+)((\s?\+\s?)(\d+))?/

We'll break this down again.

((\s?\+\s?)(\d+))?

This is another set that can be there or not be there, and still match the expression.

((\s?\+\s?)(\d+))?

Set inside of a set. Okay, so what have we got here? \s means whitespace. That can be a space, a tab or a new line. (Usually a space.) And there's a question mark after it, so it'll still match if there's no space. Next is \+. \+ is just the plus sign, but + is a common operation in regular expressions, so the backslash tells it you're talking about the character + and not the operation. And next is another maybe-space. So what the matches is [+], [+ ], [ +], or [ + ].

((\s?\+\s?)(\d+))?

This is just like the one you saw before. Number with any amount of digits.



When you put it all together, you get: (optional starting number from 0 and 99)(letter d or D)(number of any size)(optional addition, should have + sign followed by number of any size. spaces are allowed)

Example matches:
4d6+1
d20 +100
10d2 + 3
d20

Non-matches:
55000d20
10fluorine100
50 + 50 + 50

Partial matches:
5d10+1+1+1
d6 puppies + 5 puppies
3d4 + your mom

This is a 30-minute comic. I really like how it came out.

Basic About you:

Name: Kevin
Gender: Male.
Height: 5'9"
Eye color: Blue with a yellow ring in the center.
Hair Color: Brown.
Age: 20 years.
Birthday: March 23, '87
Lefty/righty/ambidextrous: Right-handed.
Piercings: Have none.
Tattoos: Also none.
Zodiac Sign: Umm, Aries.
Ring Size: My middle finger is a 10, not sure about my ring finger.
Grade: College junior.

More about you:

Are you named after anyone? Nope. Not that I know of.
Do you consider yourself tolerant to others? Extremely.
Do you have any secrets? Sure.
Do you hate yourself? No.
Do you like your handwriting? Yes. It's a bit messy.
( Read more... )

[Kashkin] Huh. I have to FTP files larger than 20 MB to my web host.
[LittleViking] Really? What files are that big?
[Kashkin] My penis.
[LittleViking] Hm. You realize hard drives store some 100+ GB per square inch these days.
[Kashkin] That's pretty large.
[LittleViking] 0.0002 square inch penis?
[Kashkin] Yup.
[LittleViking] Wow, that's about a third of a millimeter, squared. That's visible. That's like a grain of sand. 20 MB on a hard drive is the size of a grain of sand.
[Kashkin] Wow.
[Kashkin] I want a beach-sized array.
[LittleViking] I have a beach sized array.
[LittleViking] I keep it in my pants.
* LittleViking brings it full circle.
[Kashkin] Hahaha.
[Kashkin] Nicely done.

---

[FlyingOxWall] A fortune cookie told me it was destiny to talk on AIM for like 20 minutes this morning despite my hangover.
[LittleViking] A fortune cookie did?
[LittleViking] I like that cookie.
[FlyingOxWall] I do too, but it just hasn't been a very good friend lately.
[FlyingOxWall] Everytime I talk about it, it gets on the whole, "hard to be your friend when I know the entire future in short cathartic phrases..." deal.

http://www.steampowered.com/nvidia

The best part of the game is really at the end, so I don't know how good a demo would be. But if you want to try out some of the puzzles Portal has to offer and you happen to own an Nvidia video card, go ahead and check it out.

Link

The ad declares, "An enemy without borders. Hate without boundries. People perverted. A religion betrayed. A nuclear power in chaos. Madmen bent on creating it. Leaders assassinated. Democracy attacked. And Osama bin Laden still making threats. In a world where the next crisis is a moment away, America needs a leader who is ready."

Throughout the ad, we're shown video of Muslims in the Middle East. There's one shot of a crowd burning a flag (not an American flag, mind you), one shot with a few people waving AK-47's in the air, and a few shots of fires, but the rest of the video was just average Middle-Eastern life. I think he's targeting voters who aren't afraid simply of terrorists, but afraid of anyone from the Middle East or of Islamic faith.

Earlier tonight, just by chance, I happened to hear Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun played at 70% of its original speed. That means it played back slower and at a lower pitch. And, oddly, Cyndi Lauper sounds exactly like a reggae singer under these conditions.

Check it out. (If you don't hear it at first, keep listening. It really picks up after the first minute passes.)


Download Link (5 MB)

http://isitchristmas.com/

Don't forget to check Is it Christmas? this year. isitchristmas.com is online 365 days a year, displaying only a "NO" message on every day except for Christmas (when it presumably says "YES?" I haven't ever actually seen it).

I don't know if I'll post these constantly, but for now, you get two in a row.

Who needs metric?

What is widely considered to be the best meteor shower of the year, the Geminid shower, falls on Thursday night this week. In the US, you might see some early meteors as soon as it's dark out, and the meteors will become more visible by 10 PM, but the best views come after 2 AM. In areas with low light pollution, you should be able to see as many as 1-2 meteors every minute. So check it out if you can bear the cold.

Sci-Fi Channel, Friday night, 7 PM - 3 AM

If you don't know what Firefly is, it was an award-winning sci-fi "space western" that aired on Fox for a very short time. Fourteen episodes were produced, but the series was cancelled after 11 aired. Since then, it has seen great success in DVD sales, has gained a dedicated following in the subculture, and has been voted the best sci-fi show of all time by a few different publications. (The movie follow-up Serenity has also been voted best sci-fi movie ever a few times.)

Unfortunately, the marathon only covers half of the series. Worse than that, the early episodes are often considered the worst. So all of the later episodes, the greater episodes, we won't get to see. Maybe they'll run another marathon in a week or two to finish off the series?

There's still about two months before primary elections. Unless things change, it looks like it's going to be a Clinton/Giuliani election. Which I think would be boring.

Ron Paul has such a huge following on the internet, but he's only making slow progress in traditional polls. It'll be a real challenge for him to beat out Giuliani. I'm not a Republican or a Libertarian, but I'd be ecstatic to see Paul make it to the final election.

I don't think the radical Democrats like Kucinich will ever break through to the top. (Although you could argue that the top two Democratic candidates, a woman and an African American, are already pretty radical for this country.)

The Birthday Paradox is a famous example of mathematics going against intuition. According to the Birthday Paradox, in a room of 23 random people, there's a 50% chance that two of them share a birthday. The first reaction to this is usually disbelief. How could so few people have a 50-50 chance of someone sharing a birthday?

Well, there are two key points to understanding the problem. First is to add people one at a time. Second is to reverse the problem: figure out the odds of no one sharing a birthday with anyone else. Starting with one person, we can add the next into the room. The first person was born on a certain day. This person being added could be born on any of the 364 days not taken by the person before him. This means there's a 364/365 ( = 0.997) chance that they don't share a birthday.
0.3% chance that these two people do share a birthday.

When we add the next person, he has to clear the two people before him, so he has a 363/365 (0.995) chance, but we also have to pass the first test before this. To calculate that, we multiply these odds by the odds given last time. 364/365 * 363/365 = 0.991
That's a 99.1% chance that no one shares birthdays, and so a 0.9% chance that someone does.

When we add a fourth person, the odds go to 1.6% that someone shares a birthday. Fifth person, 2.7%. Since we have to pass increasingly more tests to prove no shared birthdays as more people are added, the odds jump up quickly in favor of someone getting a duplicate birthday. Here are a few more milestones:

People	Chance of a match
2	0.27%
3	0.82%
4	1.64%
5	2.71%
10	11.69%
15	25.29%
20	41.14%
23	50.73%
25	56.87%
30	70.63%
35	81.44%

If you want to test this with me, post your birthday, and get other people to post theirs until we get a match. I'm March 23rd. Now, since I don't expect to get 20, 25, 30 comments on this, I'll jumpstart things with a shortlist of famous mathematicians! This should get us into a decent percentage to start.

Birthday	Name
February 8	Daniel Bernoulli
March 31	René Descartes
April 15	Leonhard Euler
April 30	Carl Friedrich Gauss
June 8	Giovanni Domenico Cassini
August 17	Pierre de Fermat
September 17	Bernhard Riemann
November 2	George Boole
November 29	Christian Doppler
December 1	Nikolai Lobachevsky
December 10	Ada Lovelace
December 26	Charles Babbage

A few notes:

The Birthday Paradox isn't a paradox by definition. It's not a self-contradicting statement. Its name (technically incorrect as it is) comes from the way it contradicts intuition.

The Birthday Paradox assumes that all days have equal birthcounts. In reality, certain days have more births than others. Still, the statistics in the problem are fairly accurate.

I'm not sure what kind of effect it'll have, actually, to hand-pick a list of birthdays to start with. The math really works best on perfectly random dates. Anyway. We'll see.