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Dude, that's so seventies

this does not mean our brains are not fully capable of learning math instinctively

But it does. Math is fundamentally unlike language in this respect. Children are hardwired to acquire language (see for instance, The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker), and they can do so from a very young age with minimal profesional help. This is not the case with algebra. We have no math instinct in the way that we have a language instinct.

That's great, and holds true for a lot of albums (Pink Floyd's The Wall, Nine Inch Nails The Downward Spiral, for example), but the first time you pop in Britney Spears or Jennifer Lopez or Backdoor Boys you quickly realize that this is what passes for music these days, and shuffle doesn't matter because the music doesn't matter.

Olber's Paradox.

Check out the entry in E2.

It's not necessarily a problem, though and may have various solutions - some of which are mentioned in the write up and the accompanying links. Of course the Big Bang has its own fair share of paradoxes, since it's basically creation ex nihilo. Now that's a philosophical no-no if ever there was one.

Didn't Microsoft make one of the ISO-9660 extensions? Ah, yes, Joliet.

David Braben.

See this article for more information.

I believe it's a trick borrowed from the demo scene. In extremely size-critical styles of demo, such as 64k intro, coders create textures, models, and even music at runtime, rather than storing these as bitmaps, vector lists, or midi/mp3. Usually they are created with some fractal-type function.

I assume the models, levels, and sounds for this game are pregenerated and stored in some efficient format. Textures are pretty easy to generate with a fractal.

What impresses me most about those screenshots are the really cool lighting effects. It appears they have implemented realtime shadows, luminance maps, and other really difficult techniques.

I believe it's a trick borrowed from the demo scene. In extremely size-critical styles of demo, such as 64k intro, coders create textures, models, and even music at runtime, rather than storing these as bitmaps, vector lists, or midi/mp3. Usually they are created with some fractal-type function.

I assume the models, levels, and sounds for this game are pregenerated and stored in some efficient format. Textures are pretty easy to generate with a fractal.

What impresses me most about those screenshots are the really cool lighting effects. It appears they have implemented realtime shadows, luminance maps, and other really difficult techniques.

Close, but no smoking thingy.

I remembered reading this on Everything 2 and immediately thought she'd stolen it straight from there. The thief! But no, it just looks like the same author decided to post it on a website a few months afterwards.

There was a point here somewhere..

Triv

Triv

Triv

There is no fundamental difference between hypocritical support of anti-porn initiatives by American public and obligatory "but I am against child porn" remarks. There is no clear-cut difference between child porn and art. Furthermore, child porn is beneficial to children because in countries where it is mostly produced they basically face a choice between starving on the street and starring in porn.

Come on, is a porn clip of Thai 10-year old so bad? Consider the fact that she is in the prostitution business anyway and she does it to feed her family. If she is paid for posing and having sex with a nice, clean and non-violent guy instead of risking her life in some den of debauchery - good for her.

This is the truth that "they" don't want you to know. It's better if a kid is engaged in child porn production than if he is outright sold by his parents into slavery (to get the money to support the rest of the family). And even legitimately working for 14 hours a day, 7 days a week is some sweatshop (not the Nike factory) is not necessarily better than starring in porn.

So get over your initial fear, reject the stereotypes and realise that the only harmful variety of child porn is when someone kidnaps an American/Western European girl from an affluent family, locks her in the basement and repeatedly rapes her on camera. When a third-world girl shows her private parts and masturbates on camera, it causes her no harm that couldn't be healed by the money she earns.

on E2

Also at Everything2, by the same author.

The writeup has 10 C!s. Very nice.

The writeup has 10 C!s. Very nice.

Bill Gates developed the first BASIC compilier with the help of Paul Allen while in college. Source. HTH, HAND.

Oh, you want recent? What about the White House supporting the people who tried to orchestrate a Coup d'etat against the democracy in Venezuela? When the coup failed, President Chavez said that the CIA had involvement, with video.

Or how about when New Zealand said they didn't support war against Iraq, so the US shut them out of Free Trade talks, leaving Australia in instead?

Or what about the US' long laundry list of vetoes in the UN? What's the count, 35 resolutions concerning Israel vetoed by the US? Even being the sole dissenting vote in many cases. Of course this is abuse of the US' power, to please the Jewish and Christian Zionist voters back home. These weren't all binding, and some of them were common sense "S/17769/Rev. 1: Occupied Territories: Calls upon Israel to respect Muslim holy places." Why should the US, the supposed "peace broker" of the Middle East, block that, and stand as the sole vote againt?

Want more?

They should use a cryobot to explore those Antarctic lakes. Scientists just need to ensure the cryobot is entirely free of contaminants which could upset the unknown ecosystem.

I would challenge the moderators of the above comment to explain what could possibly constitute "flamebait". The lack of technical specifications for this vehicle might be explained by the fact that it's an enormous practical joke - a little late for April Fool's, perhaps, but a joke nonetheless.

Consider that from the above linked article and personal experience, in Japan anime is cartoons. The best anime - Akira might be up there - is still a cartoon movie and not of a genre which is overall taken seriously. Compare the American popular success of Scooby Doo 2 to any serious animated work and it becomes clear that just like in America, anime is not revered by the Japanese people, the expected consumers of the linked "product".

You might be able to buy a giant tree house or a Space Ghost desk and chair or an Ed, Edd, n Eddy gumball machine if you have enough money to burn in America, but no rational person does this because these are more important things to spend one's money on - like, say, anything but cartoon accessories. No rational adult would buy a Hello Kitty motorcycle.

In this regard, anyone who takes anime seriously is disregarding and disrespecting the Japanese attitude towards the media and, in effect, displaying a bizarrely childlike fixation on things that are neither very deep nor very significant.

One could argue that perhaps vehicle enthusiasts (car, bicycle, or motorcycle) are pursuing blindly a childlike desire to drive. Culturally speaking, though, there is a precedent for this fascination with the vehicle, and to demean people who are truly interested in the mechanics of their motorcycle (as opposed to, say, buying a Harley because it looks cool) is by corollary to demean people who are truly interested in how their computer works (as opposed to, say, buying an Alienware PC because it looks cool).

If the above comment was moderated down because the linked article challenges your notion of what does and doesn't constitute fine art and demand great respect in Japanese culture - well, it took me by surprise too. Educating yourself is an integral component of developing a meaningful cultural awareness; the lack of such a competent understanding is certainly a foundation of the anti-American sentiment with which some three hundred million US citizens (Slashdot is US-centric :/) must cope. Rather than blithe submission to Japanophilia, consider that this motorcycle is either an elaborate prank or a supreme waste of money on a puerile object.

I would challenge the moderators of the above comment to explain what could possibly constitute "flamebait". The lack of technical specifications for this vehicle might be explained by the fact that it's an enormous practical joke - a little late for April Fool's, perhaps, but a joke nonetheless.

Consider that from the above linked article and personal experience, in Japan anime is cartoons. The best anime - Akira might be up there - is still a cartoon movie and not of a genre which is overall taken seriously. Compare the American popular success of Scooby Doo 2 to any serious animated work and it becomes clear that just like in America, anime is not revered by the Japanese people, the expected consumers of the linked "product".

You might be able to buy a giant tree house or a Space Ghost desk and chair or an Ed, Edd, n Eddy gumball machine if you have enough money to burn in America, but no rational person does this because these are more important things to spend one's money on - like, say, anything but cartoon accessories. No rational adult would buy a Hello Kitty motorcycle.

In this regard, anyone who takes anime seriously is disregarding and disrespecting the Japanese attitude towards the media and, in effect, displaying a bizarrely childlike fixation on things that are neither very deep nor very significant.

One could argue that perhaps vehicle enthusiasts (car, bicycle, or motorcycle) are pursuing blindly a childlike desire to drive. Culturally speaking, though, there is a precedent for this fascination with the vehicle, and to demean people who are truly interested in the mechanics of their motorcycle (as opposed to, say, buying a Harley because it looks cool) is by corollary to demean people who are truly interested in how their computer works (as opposed to, say, buying an Alienware PC because it looks cool).

If the above comment was moderated down because the linked article challenges your notion of what does and doesn't constitute fine art and demand great respect in Japanese culture - well, it took me by surprise too. Educating yourself is an integral component of developing a meaningful cultural awareness; the lack of such a competent understanding is certainly a foundation of the anti-American sentiment with which some three hundred million US citizens (Slashdot is US-centric :/) must cope. Rather than blithe submission to Japanophilia, consider that this motorcycle is either an elaborate prank or a supreme waste of money on a puerile object.

Dude, it's a bike that replicates something people saw in a cartoon. It's for overgrown adult-children; there isn't a lot of crossover with the hardcore motorcycling community.

I don't understand how comapies can lay off people, replace them with machines, and expect profits to rise. They layoff people, their customers... WHO will buy their products? with no one having enough money to buy them.

There is only ONE reason for this so called "Industrial Revolution". Only one reason: to make the mill owners more money.

these stories of how the Industrial Revoluttion will mean we don't have to all spend our lives covered in shit and will be better in the end are a COMPLETE FARCE! Burn the mills!

I don't understand how comapies can lay off people, replace them with machines, and expect profits to rise. They layoff people, their customers... WHO will buy their products? with no one having enough money to buy them.

There is only ONE reason for this so called "Industrial Revolution". Only one reason: to make the mill owners more money.

these stories of how the Industrial Revoluttion will mean we don't have to all spend our lives covered in shit and will be better in the end are a COMPLETE FARCE! Burn the mills!

The wages paid to Indian workers are actually considered very good. The difference is in puchasing power parity dollars, and unadjusted rates. As more jobs are created in India, there is more competition for skilled workers and their wages increase. As the gap between US and Indian wages decreases, they will need to find other ways to compete than price. This is much like Japan did in the past 50 years: going from competition on price of good such as electronics and cars, to competing on innovation and quality. A good outcome for all concerned.

There used to be a sysadmin who worked where I now work who used to big on everything2.com. One of his greatest nodes was this one. It discussed in absurdly great length the theoretical "bandwidth" of "a station wagon full of quarter-inch tapes".

It made me laugh picturing this guy writing this. Because this is the guy who would suspend production servers from ropes dangling from ceiling AC ducts. ;)

There used to be a sysadmin who worked where I now work who used to big on everything2.com. One of his greatest nodes was this one. It discussed in absurdly great length the theoretical "bandwidth" of "a station wagon full of quarter-inch tapes".

It made me laugh picturing this guy writing this. Because this is the guy who would suspend production servers from ropes dangling from ceiling AC ducts. ;)

In an old (old old old) issue of Nintendo Power, in a feature on Japanese games, an NES/Famicom game was featured that simulated the presidential campaign and election processes. The candidates were obvious clones of current political figures (I seem to remember "George Push" (Senior)), but also included at least one female candidate and I believe some minorities. I think everyone who saw the blurb, myself included, must have marveled that the Japanese public would be so interested in the US political process when most Americans seem like they couldn't care less.

From games like the Civ series, Nation States, and many others, it's apparent that people are interested in some aspects of the role of national leader, but I have yet to see a game that really hit "being the president of the US" right on the head...maybe because that game wouldn't be worth playing?

Jennifer Government - Nation States - kind of an intro level presidential sim. Although it's really interesting, it's hard to spend more than 5 minutes a day once you have it set up.
If George Bush played Civ 3 - a little presidential gaming humor

You can find the E2 writeups here.

(not the same anonymous user)

"Anyhow, does anyone know of a site giving the history of chenobyl? I am wondering what happend that day, and what it was like. Was it a fire that spread into an explosion? Was it a chemical reaction that dumped somthing into the water? I think it's a shame since it keeps us from using nuclear energy, which can be clean and efficiant" A total rundown of the events of the Chernobyl4 nuclear meltdown.

Single Stage to orbit, airbreathing, lands and takes off like a conventional aeroplane. A snip at $10 billion (R&D- ticket price would be about a not-totally-unreasonable $100,000).

It doesn't seem to require any handwavium or unobtainium unlike (at the moment at least) the Space Elevator.

Incremental advances seem unlikely to do it - it requires an orders-of-magnitude shift in cost.

That may well happen though. Some new launchers like SpaceX promises to be quite a bit cheaper- a combination of higher launch volume and real reductions in price due to improved vehicle design very probably can drop us by that much.

Single Stage to orbit, airbreathing, lands and takes off like a conventional aeroplane. A snip at $10 billion (R&D- ticket price would be about a not-totally-unreasonable $100,000).

It doesn't seem to require any handwavium or unobtainium unlike (at the moment at least) the Space Elevator.

Incremental advances seem unlikely to do it - it requires an orders-of-magnitude shift in cost.

That may well happen though. Some new launchers like SpaceX promises to be quite a bit cheaper- a combination of higher launch volume and real reductions in price due to improved vehicle design very probably can drop us by that much.

Seriously, find passion. If this is something you're passionate about, you'll make it work. You'll bring it into existence yourself. A lot of sites, like Slashdot to E2 to Fark to Neowin to Penny Arcade, all came into being because the creators were very passionate and put forth the effort themselves. It was important enough for them to be able to do it themselves and get through the initial lean years themselves.

What I'm trying to say is that it's a lot easier to walk away from something that you've had five people working on for two months rather than something you've worked on by yourself for ten months.

Computer storage was tradionally measured in gibibytes (or mebibytes, or kibibytes) although labelled "incorrectly" as GB (gigabyte), MB (megabyte), or KB (kilobyte). That is, until hard-drive marketeers got into the act (see below).

Strictly speaking GB (gigabyte) represents 1.0e+9 bytes because giga means one billion. Similarly, mega means one million and kilo one thousand, so 1MB (megabyte) == 1.0e+6 bytes, and 1KB (kilobyte) == 1.0e+3 bytes.

In 1998, the IEC defined new prefixes to clear up the traditional confusion. See this article. Basically:

gibi (Gi) == 2^30, or approx. 1.073e+9.
mebi (Mi) == 2^20, or approx. 1.049e+9.
kibi (Ki) == 2^10, or 1024.

So a "tradional computer gigabyte" is is now properly represented 1GiB, and is exactly 1073741824 bytes.

Here come the marketeers

Realizing that most folks don't know a gibibyte from the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow (African or European?), marketeers noticed that labelling the size of their hard drives in strict measures of GB's (10^9 bytes) instead of the tradionally used GiB's (even though GiB is often "mislabelled" GB in the computer world) -- would allow them to artificially grow the size of their disks by more than 7% with no hardware modifications.

That is, unsuspecting computer geeks used to seeing the friendly GB as 1024^3 (2^30) bytes, and yet knowing from their science classis that this isn't quite correct, would continue to presume GB being used to represent (2^10)^3 bytes. After all, it's a sly bit of superiority when you know what the computer version of GB really means. Plus a geek worth her MBR can compute any power of two at the tip of a hat, right?

Yet a geek buys a drive labelled 120GB, and finds usable storage of less than 112GiB is present. This of course doesn't include overhead lost to file system management structures...

Coming up with free bytes by simply changing the packaging is a good thing for marketeers. Plus, they're not even lying about capacity! They're putting the correct (if non-traditional) number on the box.

DVD storage manufacturers adopted the same approach. So a 4.7GB DVD is 4.7*1e+9 bytes. Stated in tradtional computer-land GiBytes, this becomes: 4.377GiB.

Computer storage was tradionally measured in gibibytes (or mebibytes, or kibibytes) although labelled "incorrectly" as GB (gigabyte), MB (megabyte), or KB (kilobyte). That is, until hard-drive marketeers got into the act (see below).

Strictly speaking GB (gigabyte) represents 1.0e+9 bytes because giga means one billion. Similarly, mega means one million and kilo one thousand, so 1MB (megabyte) == 1.0e+6 bytes, and 1KB (kilobyte) == 1.0e+3 bytes.

In 1998, the IEC defined new prefixes to clear up the traditional confusion. See this article. Basically:

gibi (Gi) == 2^30, or approx. 1.073e+9.
mebi (Mi) == 2^20, or approx. 1.049e+9.
kibi (Ki) == 2^10, or 1024.

So a "tradional computer gigabyte" is is now properly represented 1GiB, and is exactly 1073741824 bytes.

Here come the marketeers

Realizing that most folks don't know a gibibyte from the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow (African or European?), marketeers noticed that labelling the size of their hard drives in strict measures of GB's (10^9 bytes) instead of the tradionally used GiB's (even though GiB is often "mislabelled" GB in the computer world) -- would allow them to artificially grow the size of their disks by more than 7% with no hardware modifications.

That is, unsuspecting computer geeks used to seeing the friendly GB as 1024^3 (2^30) bytes, and yet knowing from their science classis that this isn't quite correct, would continue to presume GB being used to represent (2^10)^3 bytes. After all, it's a sly bit of superiority when you know what the computer version of GB really means. Plus a geek worth her MBR can compute any power of two at the tip of a hat, right?

Yet a geek buys a drive labelled 120GB, and finds usable storage of less than 112GiB is present. This of course doesn't include overhead lost to file system management structures...

Coming up with free bytes by simply changing the packaging is a good thing for marketeers. Plus, they're not even lying about capacity! They're putting the correct (if non-traditional) number on the box.

DVD storage manufacturers adopted the same approach. So a 4.7GB DVD is 4.7*1e+9 bytes. Stated in tradtional computer-land GiBytes, this becomes: 4.377GiB.

Computer storage was tradionally measured in gibibytes (or mebibytes, or kibibytes) although labelled "incorrectly" as GB (gigabyte), MB (megabyte), or KB (kilobyte). That is, until hard-drive marketeers got into the act (see below).

Strictly speaking GB (gigabyte) represents 1.0e+9 bytes because giga means one billion. Similarly, mega means one million and kilo one thousand, so 1MB (megabyte) == 1.0e+6 bytes, and 1KB (kilobyte) == 1.0e+3 bytes.

In 1998, the IEC defined new prefixes to clear up the traditional confusion. See this article. Basically:

gibi (Gi) == 2^30, or approx. 1.073e+9.
mebi (Mi) == 2^20, or approx. 1.049e+9.
kibi (Ki) == 2^10, or 1024.

So a "tradional computer gigabyte" is is now properly represented 1GiB, and is exactly 1073741824 bytes.

Here come the marketeers

Realizing that most folks don't know a gibibyte from the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow (African or European?), marketeers noticed that labelling the size of their hard drives in strict measures of GB's (10^9 bytes) instead of the tradionally used GiB's (even though GiB is often "mislabelled" GB in the computer world) -- would allow them to artificially grow the size of their disks by more than 7% with no hardware modifications.

That is, unsuspecting computer geeks used to seeing the friendly GB as 1024^3 (2^30) bytes, and yet knowing from their science classis that this isn't quite correct, would continue to presume GB being used to represent (2^10)^3 bytes. After all, it's a sly bit of superiority when you know what the computer version of GB really means. Plus a geek worth her MBR can compute any power of two at the tip of a hat, right?

Yet a geek buys a drive labelled 120GB, and finds usable storage of less than 112GiB is present. This of course doesn't include overhead lost to file system management structures...

Coming up with free bytes by simply changing the packaging is a good thing for marketeers. Plus, they're not even lying about capacity! They're putting the correct (if non-traditional) number on the box.

DVD storage manufacturers adopted the same approach. So a 4.7GB DVD is 4.7*1e+9 bytes. Stated in tradtional computer-land GiBytes, this becomes: 4.377GiB.

Some commentary from someone who spends WAY too much time with the trolls of Slashdot.[1]

There's really two different types, at this point, as least split based on technology.

The former group are more "old-school" and eschew the use of scripts. The uses of scripting languages from Perl to PHP to simple shell scripts is something that this troll looks down on, and within the troll groups, you can see flame wars erupt between those who do, and those who don't use scripting.

[...]

The other group, the script users are a pestilence. I cannot begin to count the number of hours of my life that have been consumed by those rodents. Essentially, seemingly, the reason that these people exist is to spend their entire lives trying to break the system. Obviously [...], I prefer the former [to anything else, duh!].

Then by 1930 it has all slammed to an abrupt halt as relativity, Goedel's incompleteness theorem and quantum mechanics have all become mainstream. Suddenly the logical positivist view of the universe is no longer universal.

Try reading Schismatrix or Holy Fire (or even Distraction) as if it was a biography. Instead of looking for plot, look at how technology transforms the protagonist and his society. Instead of looking for one amazing technological device that drives the story (an 'artifact-come-plot-device' or 'Stargate', if you will), look for a glut of radical, unbalancing technologies, each treated with unnerving casualness.

Some of Sterling's ideas are quite ambitious, almost terrifying, and utterly convincing. In Schismatrix, you can almost feel the collective human existence struggling to instantiate itself into something that's far above intelligence. Not all of his works are great, but Schismatrix and Holy Fire were triumphs; they rank at #1 and #3 on my list of all-time-best sci-fi.

Given human's track record with operating vehicles, I'm not sure we'd want nuclear reactors flying around. Maybe in space, fine, but ferrying people to and from LEO? Get me a space elevator and then we can get stuff up to GEO.

I'd like you to support your argument that Eastern European culture has Confucianism (or here) as its foundation. I don't think that The Ottoman or Byzantine or any of the other Empires that ruled this area were typically Confuscian.

I'd like you to support your argument that Eastern European culture has Confucianism (or here) as its foundation. I don't think that The Ottoman or Byzantine or any of the other Empires that ruled this area were typically Confuscian.

I'd like you to support your argument that Eastern European culture has Confucianism (or here) as its foundation. I don't think that The Ottoman or Byzantine or any of the other Empires that ruled this area were typically Confuscian.

Their server seems to encountered a resonance cascade.

Let's be honest and clear about this too - it is not just the FCC who is doing this, they are getting lots of pressure from the religious right on these issues. This is a perfect example of how a specialty group is directly influencing the government.

The FCC looks like a bunch of idiots over these issues. They are bringing up issues that are *YEARS* old, and fining people for them. The issue they are fining Howard Stern over is from 2001.

I listen to Stern on occasion, and have been more frequently recently. This morning was a fantastic illustration of how stupid this all is. He played a clip from the Jimmy Kimmel show, where Jimmy was defending Howard. He said that they should be going after the filthiest person on TV - Oprah. Jimmy then played a clip from the Oprah show, where she was talking with some women about sex things. They were laughing and having a good time. One of the women mentioned "tossing salad" , and then proceeded to describe what it was. When Howard played this clip, it was bleeped (time delay removed) from his show. He begged his GM to let him play the clip. It was from Oprah, which runs in the mid-afternoon.

Here is the point - Oprah can get away with this kind of talk on her show, but Howard gets fined for something not nearly as graphic from 2001? He has a great argument - if they play the clip and get fined, the FCC would HAVE to fine Oprah. They would never fine Oprah. If they didn't, they would be obvious hypocrites, and if they did they would be showing the world how stupid they are behaving. You don't mess with Oprah. It would make national news if Oprah was fined for indecency.

It is all a big joke, and the religious right is standing firmly behind this one. They have strong ties to Senators (giving them cheap housing) as well as other government officials. Hell, some government officials ARE part of the religious right - all the way up to the drunk-driving President and Vice President. (1 and 2 offenses respectively)

Freeman Dyson (Freeman Dyson!) had no trouble believing in the Ringworld

believing in what sense? That one had been observed? I don't think so.

That it could be built? You'll need nearly Jupiter's mass of a substance with the same tensile strength as an atomic nucleus. In sort, not known to our physical theories (I'll stop just short of saying it's impossible). And then to spin the thing up to 1 gravity, you'll need the amount of energy that our sun puts out in 1000 years. In short, extremely difficult. Even then it's unstable.

His concept of the "Dyson Sphere" was very different from the SF concept of "a solid shell around the sun". He merely observed that the end-point of putting stuff in space to soak up the sunlight, is that all the sunlight is soaked up by millions upon millions of things, and all that gets out is the waste heat.

More info here

Bullet wounds often cause hydrostatic shock, so you may very well get nasty brain hemorrhaging from a bullet shot to the torso.

Read about Duck Typing on e2.