Slashdot Mirror

"They can send 100 pulses out per second, we can send 27,000," said Robert Feidenhan'l, chairman of the European XFEL management board. This matters because to study chemical reactions or biological processes, the X-ray strobe is used to capture flickering snapshots of the same system at different time-points that can be stitched together into a film sequence.

I'm assuming for biological and chemical processes it's used similar to femtosecond laser video photography where completely different trials are filmed at ever so slightly different times and angles on the same setup so as to create the illusion of a time sequence of a single event over a sizable area.

I'm not so enthralled by Scratch

Me neither, but in my case it's because Scratch relies on Adobe Flash Player. The HTML player is still marked as "upcoming" and on hold since the fourth quarter of 2014, despite iOS being unable to run SWF for a decade, Android only briefly ever being able to run SWF, desktop browsers making SWF click-to-play by default after having offered click-to-play as an option for years, and SWF facing its end of life in 40 months.

I can't recommend scratch highly enough. https://scratch.mit.edu/ is great. You can do some pretty neat things with it. Here are some projects you can work through http://projects.codeclubworld....

I tried to teach some Javascript game programming to a teen, but the lack of geometry skills (e.g. sin(), cos()) and physics ( e.g. d=at^2/2) made it tough going to fire cannonballs around. There is most likely a library that could hide it all, but why would you?

I've spent a couple years designing programs for teaching children from 6+ how to do programming. One of the best tools by far is MIT's Scratch.

https://scratch.mit.edu/

With a little adult guidance, you can have them doing electronic story books, drawing, simple quizzes, and tons more (one student recreated pac-man). Kids learn about use of sprites, pictures, control statements very quickly. It's all drag/drop action blocks which make it easy to learn. Some kickstarter campaign had some interesting ideas of teaching programming through robotics.

https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...
https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...

I'd start with Scratch, you'll be impressed, There are books available you can use with you kids:

https://wiki.scratch.mit.edu/w...

Hope that's helpful.

I've spent a couple years designing programs for teaching children from 6+ how to do programming. One of the best tools by far is MIT's Scratch.

https://scratch.mit.edu/

With a little adult guidance, you can have them doing electronic story books, drawing, simple quizzes, and tons more (one student recreated pac-man). Kids learn about use of sprites, pictures, control statements very quickly. It's all drag/drop action blocks which make it easy to learn. Some kickstarter campaign had some interesting ideas of teaching programming through robotics.

https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...
https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...

I'd start with Scratch, you'll be impressed, There are books available you can use with you kids:

https://wiki.scratch.mit.edu/w...

Hope that's helpful.

It's estimated that there are 200,000 early deaths from air pollution a year just in the US. So it makes sense that fossil fuels would actually be the most expensive once health is factored in.

http://news.mit.edu/2013/study...

So the national level would be about $10 per hour because that's the living wage for Kennewick, WA. (there may be, in fact, even lower). So why the call for $15 hour nationally? Why even set a national level? Why not let each State and municipality decide to set the levels themselves, since the national level effectively does nothing?

...and now, the obligatory meat link: http://www.mit.edu/people/dpol...

Not, it's like inventing a better incandescent light bulb when people are switching to LED lights:
http://news.mit.edu/2016/nanop...

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2...
"The earliest instance known to QI of this prototypical claim was printed in the August 1908 issue of a periodical for bicyclists called "Bassett's Scrap Book". A short item contrasted the modern age to ancient times and presented a variation of the epigraph:
    > The "good old times" seemed as bad to the "good-old-timers" as the present times seem to the modern man, as shown by the following translation on an inscription on a tablet in the Imperial Museum at Constantinople, Turkey:--
    >> Naram Sin, 5000 B.C.
    >> We have fallen upon evil times, the world has waxed old and wicked. Politics are very corrupt. Children are no longer respectful to their elders. Each man wants to make himself conspicuous and write a book."

But see also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The lament for Sumer and Urim or the lament for Sumer and Ur is a poem and one of five known Mesopotamian "city laments"â"dirges for ruined cities in the voice of the city's tutelary goddess.
The other city laments are:
The Lament for Ur
The Lament for Nippur
The Lament for Eridu
The Lament for Uruk
In 2004 BCE, during the last year of King Ibbi-Sin's reign, Ur fell to an army from the east.[1] The Sumerians decided that such a catastrophic event could only be explained through divine intervention and wrote in the lament that the gods, "An, Enlil, Enki and Ninmah decided [Ur's] fate"[2]
The literary works of the Sumerians were widely translated (e.g. by the Hittites, Hurrians and Canaanites), and the world-renowned expert in Sumerian history, Samuel Noah Kramer, wrote that later Greek as well as Hebrew texts "were profoundly influenced by them."[3] Contemporary scholars have drawn parallels between the lament and passages from the bible (e.g. "the Lord departed from his temple and stood on the mountain east of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 10:18-19)."[4]"

Part of what is going on in various ways in cities expecially for millennia "like moths to a flame":
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.paulgraham.com/addi...
http://web.archive.org/web/201...

Related books maybe of interest (all easier read than done):
* "The Cyber Effect: A Pioneering Cyberpsychologist Explains How Human Behavior Changes Online" by Mary Aiken
* "Wired Child: Reclaiming Childhood in a Digital Age Paperback" by Richard Freed
* "Reset Your Child's Brain: A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen-Time Paperback" by Victoria L. Dunckley MD

There were several years when the most common predicted effect of carbon warming was drought - endless drought, in every possible place, and there's nothing we can do about it! (Muahahahaha!). Articles like these have been typical:

https://www.theguardian.com/en...
https://www.theguardian.com/en...
https://www.theatlantic.com/sc...
http://news.mit.edu/2017/clima...
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/fl...
http://news.nationalgeographic...
http://www.slate.com/articles/...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/0...
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/0...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/0...

Let's just say that if you sell stock photos of dry lake beds, you're probably a millionaire by now.

It sounds like you're looking for something that already exists, albeit in specialized usage: the Digital Focal Plane Array, where each pixel has processing circuitry below (or beside) it. It does things like on-sensor motion compensation and integration and very high bit depth integration, even on a shaking platform and with low absolute pixel count. This lets you do things like make a near-1Hz near-gigapixel image from a 640x480 sensor and other interesting things.

It sounds like you're looking for something that already exists, albeit in specialized usage: the Digital Focal Plane Array, where each pixel has processing circuitry below (or beside) it. It does things like on-sensor motion compensation and integration and very high bit depth integration, even on a shaking platform and with low absolute pixel count. This lets you do things like make a near-1Hz near-gigapixel image from a 640x480 sensor and other interesting things.

1. Bainbridge, the ironies of automation
2. Slashdot today on AIs that invent internal languages to communicate
3. Non-explanatory nature of sub-symbolic AI (pdf!)
4. Algorithmic states of exception, erosion of liberties

All these ideas have a frog-in-hot-water side, they are incremental, rather than being spectacular, like 'killer robots', but some of the consequences are just as dangerous. They are in two categories a) loss of control b) social cooling and non-democratic loss of liberty.

Why would you use/need lead in a process producing silicon PV cells?

Emissions from PV Life Cycles

Check [3] Case 1 Emissions. And: "The high fraction
of direct Pb emission from material processing is related to
solar glass manufacturing, which accounts for about 80% of such Pb emission."

The law should be titled: Except for all the pollution that results from all the oil that we export, which is our number one source of revenue for our economy, Sweden plans to be carbon neutral by the year 2045. It is easy to bull shit and be sanctimonious, harder to actually be an adult and make real, hard choices about life, or at least appreciate those that do. http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/...

I have too. The efficiency isn't all that great. We're talking in the teens. High-end panels might give you 21%. The technology has physical limitations.
https://engineering.mit.edu/en...
I figured that I need something like a 20 panel system to make it work.
This is all assuming that you have a decent place to put them. Southern exposure and that satisfy zoning and HOA rules. SolarCity essentially rents the panels to you and hopefully you're able to offset the rent with the energy savings. They maintain them which is good but what happens when they degrade? Are they going to charge more to replace them?

Scratch from MIT might be what you're looking for too. https://scratch.mit.edu/

scratch: https://scratch.mit.edu/ I once saw a person designing a SAP (https://www.sap.com/index.html) system connecting modules with graphical arrows, you only needed to write code if specific details were needed.

Scratch uses an approach similar to flow charts. If you're not to picky about the notation, it might be what you are looking for.

...Did the study use a lot of jargon, confusing verbiage, and passive voice? Did it make clear and specific projections, or was everything couched in "if this scenario and those people do that then something might change here to cause this effect"?

The study summary is here: http://meetingorganizer.copern...
The MIT press release summarizing results is here: http://energy.mit.edu/news/how...

"Great talent shows itself late in life."
-Tao of Programming

Superconducting lines are efficient only for high-voltage DC transmissions (because inductive losses for AC are so huge) and DC is cost-effective only for large enough streams due to cost of convertors. Also, high-tc superconducting lines will still have to work at around 100kV because their critical current is not that large. TLDR; it's not clear if superconducting power lines even make sense.

Another fun fact - semiconductors used by high-power DC convertors are produced in nuclear reactors ( https://nrl.mit.edu/facilities... ).

Kerberos is a network authentication protocol. It is designed to provide strong authentication for client/server applications by using secret-key cryptography.

Astronomers have had a notion of the multiverse for decades. So while the word universe originally meant all that existed, it has shifted to meaning a variety of things since there are different types of multiverses that have been theorized.

Tech needs almost nothing to produce since it includes software

Uhm... what? You do know that increased demand for tech has caused the demand for raw materials involved in making tech, such as rare-earth minerals, to skyrocket?

Take, for instance, one of the world’s fastest-improving technologies: silicon-based semiconductors. Over the last few decades, technological improvements in the efficiency of semiconductors have greatly reduced the amount of material needed to make a single transistor. As a result, today’s smartphones, tablets, and computers are far more powerful and compact than computers built in the 1970s.
Nonetheless, the researchers find that consumers’ demand for silicon has outpaced the rate of its technological change, and that the world’s consumption of silicon has grown by 345 percent over the last four decades. As others have found, by 2005, there were more transistors used than printed text characters.
“Despite how fast technology is racing, there’s actually more silicon used today, because we now just put more stuff on, like movies, and photos, and things we couldn’t even think of 20 years ago,” says Christopher Magee, a professor of the practice of engineering systems in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.
“So we’re still using a little more material all the time.”
The researchers found similar trends in 56 other materials, goods, and services, from basic resources such as aluminum and formaldehyde to hardware and energy technologies such as hard disk drives, transistors, wind energy, and photovoltaics. In all cases, they found no evidence of dematerialization, or an overall reduction in their use, despite technological improvements to their performance.
“There is a techno-optimist’s position that says technological change will fix the environment,” Magee observes. “This says, probably not.” - -

“[Technology] will get us to a sustainable world — it has to,” says J. Doyne Farmer, a professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the research. “I say this not only because we need it, but because there is only so much we can suck out of the Earth, and eventually we will be forced into a sustainable world, one way or another. The question is whether we can do that without great pain. Magee’s paper shows that we need to expect more pain than some of us thought.”

Chips don't grow on trees. This is a classic case of the Jevon's paradox which has been noticed since the very beginning of industrialization: as you increase the efficiency of a technology, whether it's coal plants, internal combustion engines or microchips, the demand for said technology goes up.

We have a limited amount of raw-materials in the ground and the extraction of the remaining resources will grow increasingly difficult and expensive with time, which means recycling of old electronics more efficiently is the only sustainable option in the long run. Same goes for plastics: we currently dump billions of dollars worth of plastic to dumps and the oceans but as the cost of oil keeps rising and plastics become more expensive, we should start to see the market turn towards a greener economy not because they care about the environment but because picking floating plastic out of the sea and reprocessing it will at one point (hopefully soon) become more cost-efficient than making new plastics out of a perishing resource.

I distinctly remember some researchers use something similar to see through walls years ago.
It was even posted on here.
Yeah here it was: See thruogh walls with Wi-fi.
Video too .
A more recent (2015) one with motion

That's just the capital cost - the operating cost is even worse. CO2 capture adds 30-50% to the cost of the electricity produced, depending on the type of plant. And that's just the capture - it doesn't even include the transport and long-term sequestration of the captured CO2.

> 'China has a lot of influence over North Korea,'

That is in fact true.

China is the DPRK's largest export market by far.
It goes like this:
#1 China $2.34 billion/yr
#2 India $98 million/yr

Their single largest export is coal, at just under $1B/yr.
And China just stopped buying it last week.

How does one calculate the damages a company suffered by being rendered unable to generate financial reports?

Part four of this (about half way through it) has an example (about half way through it) of how ridiculous damage estimates for computer crime were "determined".
http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hack...
Damage of $79,449 was determined (in itemised detail) for downloading a document that could be purchased in hard copy form for $13.

Sadly the same sort of reasoning still applies.

10% of Germany's imported goods are from China. I'm sure it's much more than your "iPhone assembly", but I don't have insight into exactly what is being imported. I doubt the iPhone assembly is ~10Billion source Much more than you are letting on at any rate.

Now in your defense, Germany is one of few countries with a net export benefit. The US trade deficit with China is considerably different. Our main export to China tends to be refuse, and we import all kinds of goods. Come to the US and look at a store, virtually any store. It is extremely difficult in the US not to purchase something made in China.

I can't find an exact link but the experiment was in relation with the "Dynamic decision making" topic.

There is a famous experiment/game called "The beer distribution game":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Here's what an expert in this field concluded:

Subjects generate large amplitude oscillations with stable phase and gain relationships among the variables. [...] Analysis shows the subjects fall victim to several 'misperceptions of feedback' identified in prior experimental studies of dynamic decisionmaking. Specifically, they fail to account for control actions which have been initiated but not yet had their effect. More subtle, subjects are insensitive to the presence of feedback from their decisions to the environment
and attribute the dynamics to exogenous variables, leading their normative efforts away from the source of difficulty.

https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstre...

Before you jump to conclusions about "racist software"...

What exactly are the accusations you are defending against?

I think you missed the keyword in there: before. If you didn't think it was coming, this is the internet, some people think the Earth is flat and the US government "did 9/11", so it's only a matter of time before someone claims the software is racist.

I will add that bias is not necessarily conscious racism; it could be those who build the equipment and/or train staff on using the equipment are mostly used to dealing with people of a certain ethnic group.

You misunderstand when I wrote, "have their face very well lit up," i mean that you need to have lights specifically for lighting their face. A bunch of pictures were from the DMV which isn't exactly a photography studio. A better solution might be to use polarized light and a polarized light to joint the red, green and blue that are already on the CCD and use the polarized light to produce a 3d model of the person's face. If it works with skin, it would be pefect.

Microwave ovens do generate microwaves. Using the waves, we can:

• - see through walls: http://people.csail.mit.edu/fadel/wivi/
• - identify people: https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.03430
• - monitor heart rate and breathing patterns: http://witrack.csail.mit.edu/vitalradio
• - identify key strokes: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2790109

Don't be so naive.

Microwave ovens do generate microwaves. Using the waves, we can:

• - see through walls: http://people.csail.mit.edu/fadel/wivi/
• - identify people: https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.03430
• - monitor heart rate and breathing patterns: http://witrack.csail.mit.edu/vitalradio
• - identify key strokes: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2790109

Don't be so naive.

Thanks for the reference, I hadn't encountered Giedion previously. Another visionary of his generation was Marshall McLuhan (The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man [1951]). Along with Buckminster Fuller and freeman Dyson (and others of course), they anticipated a lot.

For a light, visual read, I recommend Matthew Frederick:

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books...

Good perspectives (pun intended) applicable to Ux and information flow.

Can you provide an actual statistical analysis of your conclusion

Are you serious? Do you also need "statistical analysis" that the earth isn't flat? Look at any measure of economic freedom, such as the Ease of Doing Business Index, which measures the burden of government regulation and corruption. The top ten are: New Zealand, Singapore, Denmark, Hong Kong, South Korea, Norway, United Kingdom, United States, and Sweden. These are all prosperous countries. The bottom ten are: Haiti, Angola, Afghanistan, Congo, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Venezuela, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia. These countries are, economically and politically, the worst of the worst.

If you look at measures of social tolerance, and rule of law, such as the Human Freedom Index, you see the same pattern. Free countries are prosperous. Repressive countries are dirt poor.

Clearly we need regulation for things that have no market solution, such as pollution and enforcing contracts, but if you build a system where the government is "picking winners", handing out subsidies and tax breaks, controlling prices, and building "national champions", then you are going to end up with a corrupt and inefficient system.

$7k/kg by Falcon Heavy pricing. Would you rather a different launch system?

Have you been paying attention? The proposal is not to launch DIRECTLY from Earth. The word you don't seem to understand is DIRECTLY.

Not really. But the problem is your "lowering prices" standards involves having to send things into to an entirely different gravity well (consumables), and landed propulsively, so that other different things can then be launched from said gravity well.

What? The problem is no one has made a vehicle large enough to launch a manned Mars vehicle. No one. It's not about "lowering" standards. It's about practical limits.

Your proposal, absolutely.

False: It's not my proposal. Experts like at MIT say it's the est option.

From Earth, there are no diminishing returns whatsoever. Just the opposite - the more you launch, the cheaper it gets per kg.

Er? Are you insane? There are always diminishing returns. So the ISS was launched at once will all modules intact or was it built over decades? Why was that? Because no one can build a rocket large enough.

One: completely and utterly false. There are a huge number of different proposals for this, all of them technologically feasible.

List one.

Two: your counterproposal involves doing the same for the moon, and then doing constant resupply so that they can build things that require an entire industrial base there. It's an absurdity.

Again, not my proposal

It does not require a huge infrastructure but it does require infrastructure. The alternative is using Earth to refuel at the high cost of LEO orbit costs.

Incorrect, and an absurd statement to make. The "Journey To Mars" program is the core of NASA's focus. (If it wasn't, nobody would ever put MOXIE on Mars 2020. ;) )

Do we have a manned space vehicle ready for Mars? It is in the planning stages? By YOUR LOGIC, the mission to Mars doesn't exist either.

Here ya go: https://scratch.mit.edu/projec...

Sure. It just wasn't a hot news item until there was actually a viable product. Batteries, unlike blu-ray constantly make the news even when there's nothing viable to show for it.

So I guess we should just not report promising technology? Seriously, are you people like 85 years old and pissed off about your Ni-Cad stock tanking?

I'm massively skeptical about this report, it doesn't have the ring of veracity - mostly through lack of information. But I actually want to hear about it.

I tend to lend these people more credence - http://news.mit.edu/2014/liqui... or these http://www.wbur.org/bostonomix... even if they are a little loose with the "unlimited" http://www.wbur.org/bostonomix.... A lotta stuff going on, despite what teh Slashdot denial crowd believes. Then again, maybe we need to suit up and get to the coal mines.

I feel your confusion. This may be "old school" but I feel it's solid (or has been for me). Start with learning the basic rules.

A lot of people like Python but because most languages use certain characters to enclose blocks of code (and python only uses indents) I would suggest starting with Java or C/C++. Many here will say Python is easier (ruby is probably easiest for many), but your goal will be to have room to grow. You'll find more languages conform to the C/C++ or Java syntax style rules than Python or Ruby. I find it easier to ready than Python myself.

Do yourself a favor and skip VB.net. If you want pure Microsoft (and I would advise against that, would have saved me much grief early in my career) you can do C# and you'll be better prepared for languages with more platforms.

Java, for example you can use in many enterprise system and embedded systems, including Android. C/C++ you can use for robotic controllers, IPhones (objective-c), real-time critical applications (and gaming!!).

Some may suggest starting with scripting languages like PHP, Python or Ruby. there is faster "joy", but I'd sooner suggest starting with MIT's Scratch https://scratch.mit.edu/ (GUI language for teaching children basic of programming). It's a great teaching tool for anyone I think. Hey, it's still valid basics which converts the GUI instructs into 'C'. the reason

I'm so "hung up" on starting with C/C++ or Java is most newer languages take a lot of their cues from the concepts widely used in C/C++/Java. once you learn one of these (especially C++/Java) you can step into any other language out there with relative ease. Some good sites to start would include:

http://lifehacker.com/five-bes...
Note: These are all free or have free options

http://www.learn-c.org/
http://landofcode.com/programm...
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/el...
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/el...
https://www.codecademy.com/lea...
http://www.coursera.org/ (real university level courses, a little intimidating at first, but worth it)
http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/t...

For python:
https://www.python.org/

For Ruby:
https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/

the courses as udemy are a little light so I'd only go there for review.

I've given many options here although I've stated my preference. The other advantage to using C/C++ or Java is they make using these invaluable books easier to read:

Writing Solid Code: Microsoft Techniques for Developing Bug-free C. Programs (Microsoft Programming Series) by Maguire, Steve
Code Complete by Steve McConnell


Yes, these books are from MS and old, but I found them invaluable (and I wish MS had actually practice what came from their own publishing companies when writing the code for W2K and XP). Was required reading at one workplace. You'll want to learn about Object-Oriented approaches as well as syntax. It's a lot to take in and this is just the beginning, but it's fun journey. Oh, I would agree, don't bother with Basic. You are better off with Python or Ruby. :D Again, to reduce your learning curve later on, I'd start with C/C++/Java. You'll be glad you did.

I feel your confusion. This may be "old school" but I feel it's solid (or has been for me). Start with learning the basic rules.

A lot of people like Python but because most languages use certain characters to enclose blocks of code (and python only uses indents) I would suggest starting with Java or C/C++. Many here will say Python is easier (ruby is probably easiest for many), but your goal will be to have room to grow. You'll find more languages conform to the C/C++ or Java syntax style rules than Python or Ruby. I find it easier to ready than Python myself.

Do yourself a favor and skip VB.net. If you want pure Microsoft (and I would advise against that, would have saved me much grief early in my career) you can do C# and you'll be better prepared for languages with more platforms.

Java, for example you can use in many enterprise system and embedded systems, including Android. C/C++ you can use for robotic controllers, IPhones (objective-c), real-time critical applications (and gaming!!).

Some may suggest starting with scripting languages like PHP, Python or Ruby. there is faster "joy", but I'd sooner suggest starting with MIT's Scratch https://scratch.mit.edu/ (GUI language for teaching children basic of programming). It's a great teaching tool for anyone I think. Hey, it's still valid basics which converts the GUI instructs into 'C'. the reason

I'm so "hung up" on starting with C/C++ or Java is most newer languages take a lot of their cues from the concepts widely used in C/C++/Java. once you learn one of these (especially C++/Java) you can step into any other language out there with relative ease. Some good sites to start would include:

http://lifehacker.com/five-bes...
Note: These are all free or have free options

http://www.learn-c.org/
http://landofcode.com/programm...
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/el...
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/el...
https://www.codecademy.com/lea...
http://www.coursera.org/ (real university level courses, a little intimidating at first, but worth it)
http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/t...

For python:
https://www.python.org/

For Ruby:
https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/

the courses as udemy are a little light so I'd only go there for review.

I've given many options here although I've stated my preference. The other advantage to using C/C++ or Java is they make using these invaluable books easier to read:

Writing Solid Code: Microsoft Techniques for Developing Bug-free C. Programs (Microsoft Programming Series) by Maguire, Steve
Code Complete by Steve McConnell


Yes, these books are from MS and old, but I found them invaluable (and I wish MS had actually practice what came from their own publishing companies when writing the code for W2K and XP). Was required reading at one workplace. You'll want to learn about Object-Oriented approaches as well as syntax. It's a lot to take in and this is just the beginning, but it's fun journey. Oh, I would agree, don't bother with Basic. You are better off with Python or Ruby. :D Again, to reduce your learning curve later on, I'd start with C/C++/Java. You'll be glad you did.

I feel your confusion. This may be "old school" but I feel it's solid (or has been for me). Start with learning the basic rules.

A lot of people like Python but because most languages use certain characters to enclose blocks of code (and python only uses indents) I would suggest starting with Java or C/C++. Many here will say Python is easier (ruby is probably easiest for many), but your goal will be to have room to grow. You'll find more languages conform to the C/C++ or Java syntax style rules than Python or Ruby. I find it easier to ready than Python myself.

Do yourself a favor and skip VB.net. If you want pure Microsoft (and I would advise against that, would have saved me much grief early in my career) you can do C# and you'll be better prepared for languages with more platforms.

Java, for example you can use in many enterprise system and embedded systems, including Android. C/C++ you can use for robotic controllers, IPhones (objective-c), real-time critical applications (and gaming!!).

Some may suggest starting with scripting languages like PHP, Python or Ruby. there is faster "joy", but I'd sooner suggest starting with MIT's Scratch https://scratch.mit.edu/ (GUI language for teaching children basic of programming). It's a great teaching tool for anyone I think. Hey, it's still valid basics which converts the GUI instructs into 'C'. the reason

I'm so "hung up" on starting with C/C++ or Java is most newer languages take a lot of their cues from the concepts widely used in C/C++/Java. once you learn one of these (especially C++/Java) you can step into any other language out there with relative ease. Some good sites to start would include:

http://lifehacker.com/five-bes...
Note: These are all free or have free options

http://www.learn-c.org/
http://landofcode.com/programm...
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/el...
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/el...
https://www.codecademy.com/lea...
http://www.coursera.org/ (real university level courses, a little intimidating at first, but worth it)
http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/t...

For python:
https://www.python.org/

For Ruby:
https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/

the courses as udemy are a little light so I'd only go there for review.

I've given many options here although I've stated my preference. The other advantage to using C/C++ or Java is they make using these invaluable books easier to read:

Writing Solid Code: Microsoft Techniques for Developing Bug-free C. Programs (Microsoft Programming Series) by Maguire, Steve
Code Complete by Steve McConnell


Yes, these books are from MS and old, but I found them invaluable (and I wish MS had actually practice what came from their own publishing companies when writing the code for W2K and XP). Was required reading at one workplace. You'll want to learn about Object-Oriented approaches as well as syntax. It's a lot to take in and this is just the beginning, but it's fun journey. Oh, I would agree, don't bother with Basic. You are better off with Python or Ruby. :D Again, to reduce your learning curve later on, I'd start with C/C++/Java. You'll be glad you did.

Watch along with courses at actual University. CS and other subjects.
Berkely Webcast

OpenCourseWare MIT
MIT OCW

Skimmed the CS parts of both programs back in the day. I have a BS in CS from a state college. Found both programs interesting and appreciate the very different approaches to the same subject.

Interesting quote !

In case anyone is interested is the paragraph it is quoted from:

The Meditations By Marcus Aurelius, Book 12

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others. If then a god or a wise teacher should present himself to a man and bid him to think of nothing and to design nothing which he would not express as soon as he conceived it, he could not endure it even for a single day. So much more respect have we to what our neighbours shall think of us than to what we shall think of ourselves.

Well, they cut the cost of a launch by a factor of 10

Doesn't matter. Per-kilo cost is the only thing that matters. Also, would need to see run the numbers taking into account all of their accidents (and we may not have enough data points yet) to see if that cost savings really holds up.

And even if they had achieved a significant cost savings, that doesn't mean it's a tech revolution. NASA is an expensive, overbuilt pile of shit, full of parasites who are politicians, not scientists. Anyone who is paying attention has known this for 30 years now. If you can't understand why it doesn't take a "tech visionary" to trim some fat from the bloated corpse of a failed government agency...

I guess that doesn't qualify.

Nope. I don't care about landing a rocket on a barge vs. runway shuttle landing vs. splashdown and neither should you. Total cost per kilo is all that matters, and I am referring only to cost savings caused by Musk being a "tech visionary", not the savings caused by his not-being-a-bureaucratic-POS-like-NASA.

Let's try a thought experiment, name a single thing that you consider a "new technology".

American scientists' discovery and refinement of aluminum-based solid rocket booster fuels. That took me less than 5 seconds to remember and type. I'm sure if one were to go digging on Wikipedia there would be two hundred more obvious examples.[1]

you don't understand what technology is. I mean that sincerely. You have no fucking clue.

If you had any argument or retort whatsoever, you could provide it. If you had a single example of SpaceX's massively cost-saving technology, you would surely mock me with it. But you don't. So here's one for free: "putting the LOX in the rocket at the very last second to reduce boil-off." But... say! That's not really a "technology", is it? It's a minor corner-cutting, cost-saving gimmick, and it's a slightly dangerous one at that. It's one that may well be more expensive in the long run due to a raised risk of accident.

Having business acumen, be it short term or long term, real or imagined, is not the same thing as being a "tech visionary"

You don't care about being wrong.

Oh, but I do. Which is precisely why I didn't brainlessly jump on the Musk fanboy wagon, because that would lead me to saying a lot of wrong stuff.

And the people I do tend to admire, like (for instance) Sam Harris, I am not afraid to criticize relentlessly.

You care only about shitting on people you don't like.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of adult literacy courses available across the nation. I suggest that you take advantage of them. I've repeatedly said that I don't think Musk is a bad person; it's just overrated. His actual accomplishments are being vastly overstated, and his proposed future projects are being taken far too seriously.


1. That said, there aren't any major cost saving spaceflight technologies in the foreseeable future unless the EM drive actually pans out, but that still won't get you out of the atmosphere. Cheap spaceflight is obviously a pipe dream. Other areas, like general AI and electric vehicles and biotech and nanotech, are much more promising. My major criticism of Muskites is they are tilting at windmills and setting themselves up for failure.

There is a solution, more efficient use of the network:

Led by Professor Daniela Rus of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), researchers developed an algorithm that found that 3,000 four-passenger cars could serve 98 percent of taxi demand in New York City, with an average wait-time of only 2.7 minutes.

“Instead of transporting people one at a time, drivers could transport two to four people at once, results in fewer trips, in less time, to make the same amount of money,” says Rus, who wrote a related paper with former CSAIL postdoc Javier Alonso-Mora, assistant professor Samitha Samaranayake of Cornell University, PhD student Alex Wallar and MIT professor Emilio Frazzoli. “A system like this could allow drivers to work shorter shifts, while also creating less traffic, cleaner air and shorter, less stressful commutes.”

The team also found that 95 percent of demand would be covered by just 2,000 ten-person vehicles, compared to the nearly 14,000 taxis that currently operate in New York City.

...but they aren't programmed by evolution to disregard 95%+ of it. Pretty much the exact opposite actually. We tune, prune, select, and evolve these algorithms to do this one thing really well. Frankly, its a wonder humans can do as well as we do. A testament to our pattern matching skills, adaptability, and lack of immutable hard wiring in the 'ol thinky thinky bits.

Something I saw that might be able to help humans get a step up on the algorithms, or actually amalgamate humans and computers, is this:
Video Magnification

Maybe cancerous skin lesions absorb slightly different light wavelengths? If so, magnification of the minuscule differences could pinpoint it. Fun to ponder.

This largely depends on how the survey was worded. I am all for developing alternative energy sources, but I am also realistic about how feasible and financially viable it is. Right now there are a few criteria that need to be met for US power needs:

1. The power must be economically competitive with existing sources. Current solar PV arrays are about on par with natural gas turbines.
2. Power available as it is needed 24/7/365. This is the difficulty that comes with solar PV, wind etc.

If tomorrow someone perfects the ultra high capacity liquid metal battery http://news.mit.edu/2016/batte... or some other way to efficiently store massive amounts of energy efficiently then solar and wind and other alternative power sources become grid wide viable options for baseline generation. As it is, no renewable power source works reliably when the sun goes down/wind randomly stops blowing. I have over 5kW of solar panels myself, because it made financial sense and paid for it'self within about 10 years.

Rather than spend $billions on the US war machine to ensure the reliable supply of oil to the country, the US government should be subsidizing the production of batteries to store solar energy. Batteries are the single biggest expense in providing a reliable supply of energy 24 hours a day. There is plenty of space in the desert to put up the solar arrays, on top of houses, factories, car parks. Solar panels are cheap now. Just need batteries to make it all work.
You already have quality electric cars which are capable of replacing most peoples needs, all forms of heating cooling etc can be powered of electricity.
There is not a lot stopping things except the cost.

This largely depends on how the survey was worded. I am all for developing alternative energy sources, but I am also realistic about how feasible and financially viable it is. Right now there are a few criteria that need to be met for US power needs:

1. The power must be economically competitive with existing sources. Current solar PV arrays are about on par with natural gas turbines.
2. Power available as it is needed 24/7/365. This is the difficulty that comes with solar PV, wind etc.

If tomorrow someone perfects the ultra high capacity liquid metal battery http://news.mit.edu/2016/batte... or some other way to efficiently store massive amounts of energy efficiently then solar and wind and other alternative power sources become grid wide viable options for baseline generation. As it is, no renewable power source works reliably when the sun goes down/wind randomly stops blowing. I have over 5kW of solar panels myself, because it made financial sense and paid for it'self within about 10 years.