Here is a typesetting comparison between Word and LaTeX. Here is some more discussion. Really, I think LaTeX was created by people who are passionate about the 2000 year old art of typography (Roman). For a long time, MS has ignored far too much of that history in the way it typesets. In my experience, I can always tell a Word document from a LaTeX document, even if the fonts are substantially identical. There is something sub-consciously beautiful about proper typesetting.
What do you mean "in the future"? I've got students whipping out graphing calculators to multiply 2*2.
True story: A math teacher I know once had a student come up to him who claimed his calculator was broken. The teacher took the calculator and entered 4, hit square root and got 2. Entered 25, hit square root and got 5. "Hmmmmm...it seems to work for me" he said. The student then proceeded to take the calculator, enter the number 1, and hit square root repeatedly. "See...the button doesn't work".
Try to do calculus problems without pen and paper. Would Microsoft suggest using MS Word Equation Editor?! Just give me a minute while I swallow my vomit. Ok, I'm fine now.
I'm a LaTeX aficionado. I do quite a reasonable amount of math type-setting. I use LaTeX because the output looks amazing, and because I can use my keyboard alone, instead of having to click on menus and buttons. However, it is still an order of magnitude slower than good old fashioned hand-written problem solving.
Call me a cynic, but the only word I see there is "if".
Yeah well, you probably would have been cynical of SpaceX when their first three launches failed. Now they are on track to dominate the entire industry, even without reusability. Looking at Musk's history, when he says something is possible, you can be quite sure that success is in the set of possible outcomes.
I mean, who's SpaceX's biggest customer? The US Government.
They are the world's cheapest launch service provider and that is without re-usability. They will likely become the dominant launch provider in the world. If they get re-usability to work economically, this will enable mass launches of inexpensive satellites, which could change the entire communications industry. Musk doesn't think small.
I suppose its not a bad thing to have just in case but I don't see the reasoning behind the fixation on it as a design requirement and their ranting about its "importance" in press releases. In almost 300 manned space launches a Launch Escape system has only been of verifiable use in a single incident(Soyuz T-10-1).
The same rockets used for the launch escape will also be used as a propulsive landing system that can land like a helicopter.
Companies like SolarCity basically install solar systems for no money up front, and then lease them back to you for a period. For many houses, even with these fees, the SolarCity systems will save the homeowner quite a bit of money. Licenses to sell power back to the grid are usually restricted, even in states they are allowed. If you have a battery system installed, you will no longer have to sell your excess solar energy back to the grid. You'll simply be able to store it in your battery for later use. Thus, homeowners with these systems may not have to apply for licenses for their solar systems, since they will not be doing net-metering. This will allow many users to install solar panels who couldn't before. It removes the ability for utilities and/or state governments to restrict the number of homes with solar panels. This is why these batteries will likely have a huge impact.
Certainly it's preferable to 'Rich people sitting on their wealth'.
The amazing thing about Elon Musk is that when he was a student he actually lived on $1/day for a while. He said that knowing he could live on so little was quite freeing, enabling him to take more risks.
I really don't think of him as your typical billionaire.
Can anyone explain why Jeff Bezos is doing the same thing that SpaceX is already doing ?
To lower cost to orbit.. check
To design re-usable first stages... check
The only difference I see is that they want to use LOX/LH for first stage.
And even then, they plan to go to LOX/LMethane after that.
Of course, competition is always nice to have.
Yeah, the only difference is that Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, two years before Space X was founded, and only just now launched his first rocket. Bezos sounds like the Justin Hammer of the commercial space industry.
Why purchase it in the first place if I still have to rely on the grid? Seems like a waste of money unless it is strictly for backup purposes only. And even then, it won't run what is needed like electric heat or A/C unless you purchase multiple units. Then natural gas and propane generators would be much more cost effective.
You purchase it so that you can store grid electrical energy while the rates are low overnight, and use it when rates are high during peak hours.
Tesla dont make batteries they just buy them from Panasonic, American business in a nutshell, buy $product from Asia and tell everyone you made it, Americas is just Asias best salesman, nothing innovative here (except PR) at all.
Will future aircraft be able to also make the switch to electric? Yes, of course. Electric driven propellers should do the trick.
Of course, the size of the batteries needed will preclude carrying any passengers or cargo.
I don't think that is necessarily true. One option is to build hybrid electrical airplanes. And if battery power density and durability continues to improve, I think you might be surprised what is possible if you fill the wings of an airplane with electrochemical cells. Elon Musk has speculated that electric airplanes might be possible if we go beyond the incremental improvements of the current players.
There are countless more recent examples I could have written about.
So go ahead then, because I think it's really silly whenever a new Muslim atrocity occurs, especially when it comes to women, that some apologist comes along and talks about things Christians did centuries ago.
Are you obtuse? Did you read what I wrote? I am criticizing monotheism as a whole. I probably despise extremism more than you do. I just see the historical context, and I see aspects of extremism in America that are similar to Islamic extremism. That is not being an apologist. It is being a realist.
Sounds like dystopia to me. Something about a bunch of kindergarteners staring at a giant screen seems very 1984.
I think the truly intractable problem is that such a system would centralize control of the educational system. Centralize it right down to every single word that is presented. The true power of the public education system is that it gives teachers a great deal of independence in what they say in the classroom. Imagine a situation when something terrible happens in our democracy. Someone seizes control. The system gets even more perverted than it already is. Then imagine an educational system where children only received "approved" resources. No independent human teacher. Just video and text. If the children don't get information from the media, then they will effectively be blind to reality.
I know this is hypothetical, but I think it demonstrates my point, that independent teachers are an essential buffer against tyranny emerging in our democracy.
DON'T pretend that "all religions are equally wrong"; they are not.
I don't say that. I assert that mono-theistic religions have shown themselves capable of equally vile fanaticism, most especially when they are combined with the levers of power of the state.. See my post above.
Pray forgive me if I see the Muslims as a significantly larger threat.
There are countless more recent examples I could have written about. However, Hypatia is in my opinion more relevant. Before 400AD or so, Roman and Greek society was based around classical foundations of rationalism and philosophy. Yes they worshipped gods, but there was tolerance for the worship of many different gods, and by extension tolerance for fundamentally different world-views. Classical civilization created great art, great philosophy, great mathematics, great architecture. We owe our systems of laws, of money, of art/drama to classical Greco-Roman civilization. And the fact that Greco-Roman civilization had flaws (e.g. slavery) does not change the greatness of what they accomplished.
In the early-mid 300AD's Constantine came to power as emperor of the Roman empire. He made Christianity the state religion of the empire. Christianity spread like wildfire, snuffing out anything that opposed it. The instance I referred to earlier, Hypatia's murder, is commonly thought of as the end of the Classical Era. In Hypatia's school, it is possible that astronomers theorized that Earth travelled around the Sun. If an astronomer had thought this, the idea would have been discussed and possibly accepted. In the new christian world, to suggest an such an idea would be blasphemy and would result in the suggester being executed in some gruesome manner.
The adoption of Christianity in as the state religion in Europe led to what is commonly known as the Dark Ages, a period of about 1000 years in which European civilization stagnated. Progress in the arts, in knowledge of the world (what we would call science), in philosophy largely came to a halt. Europeans largely forgot how to build great buildings. This era is thought to have begun to come to an end when European intellectuals began re-discovering Greco-Roman rationalism during the Renaissance, and is exemplified in Florence, when the architect Filippo Brunelleschi re-discovered Roman dome building techniques in order to build il Duomo.
When I see these stone-age islamic fanatics trying to hack away at the edifice of modernity, I cannot help but thinking about what christianity did to European civilization during the Dark Ages. I also cannot help thinking of those in America who so resemble these stone-age fanatics, the christian dominionists and those who can best be described as the American taliban. If you think it is only muslims who are capable of fanaticism, you are fooling your self.
"Hypatia (born c. AD 350 – 370; died 415[1][3]) was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher in Egypt, then a part of the Byzantine Empire. She was the head of the Neoplatonic school at Alexandria, where she taught philosophy and astronomy."
"One day on the streets of Alexandria, Egypt, in the year 415 or 416, a mob of Christian zealots led by Peter the Lector accosted a woman’s carriage and dragged her from it and into a church, where they stripped her and beat her to death with roofing tiles. They then tore her body apart and burned it. Who was this woman and what was her crime? Hypatia was one of the last great thinkers of ancient Alexandria and one of the first women to study and teach mathematics, astronomy and philosophy. Though she is remembered more for her violent death, her dramatic life is a fascinating lens through which we may view the plight of science in an era of religious and sectarian conflict."
I hate these islamic extremists at least as much as anyone here. But it isn't just islam that is capable of such things.
Slashdot Mirror
To be on the safe side, you should never teach math in Australia, especially not combinatorics!
Nor division.
Here is a typesetting comparison between Word and LaTeX. Here is some more discussion. Really, I think LaTeX was created by people who are passionate about the 2000 year old art of typography (Roman). For a long time, MS has ignored far too much of that history in the way it typesets. In my experience, I can always tell a Word document from a LaTeX document, even if the fonts are substantially identical. There is something sub-consciously beautiful about proper typesetting.
What do you mean "in the future"? I've got students whipping out graphing calculators to multiply 2*2.
True story: A math teacher I know once had a student come up to him who claimed his calculator was broken. The teacher took the calculator and entered 4, hit square root and got 2. Entered 25, hit square root and got 5. "Hmmmmm...it seems to work for me" he said. The student then proceeded to take the calculator, enter the number 1, and hit square root repeatedly. "See...the button doesn't work".
Try to do calculus problems without pen and paper. Would Microsoft suggest using MS Word Equation Editor?! Just give me a minute while I swallow my vomit. Ok, I'm fine now.
I'm a LaTeX aficionado. I do quite a reasonable amount of math type-setting. I use LaTeX because the output looks amazing, and because I can use my keyboard alone, instead of having to click on menus and buttons. However, it is still an order of magnitude slower than good old fashioned hand-written problem solving.
For decades launching these rockets was not a problem for Russia.
The problems at Roscosmos couldn't have anything to do with financial irregularities and misuse of funds, or financial pressures caused by the current economic crisis. Nope. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Call me a cynic, but the only word I see there is "if".
Yeah well, you probably would have been cynical of SpaceX when their first three launches failed. Now they are on track to dominate the entire industry, even without reusability. Looking at Musk's history, when he says something is possible, you can be quite sure that success is in the set of possible outcomes.
I mean, who's SpaceX's biggest customer? The US Government.
They are the world's cheapest launch service provider and that is without re-usability. They will likely become the dominant launch provider in the world. If they get re-usability to work economically, this will enable mass launches of inexpensive satellites, which could change the entire communications industry. Musk doesn't think small.
I suppose its not a bad thing to have just in case but I don't see the reasoning behind the fixation on it as a design requirement and their ranting about its "importance" in press releases. In almost 300 manned space launches a Launch Escape system has only been of verifiable use in a single incident(Soyuz T-10-1).
The same rockets used for the launch escape will also be used as a propulsive landing system that can land like a helicopter.
Companies like SolarCity basically install solar systems for no money up front, and then lease them back to you for a period. For many houses, even with these fees, the SolarCity systems will save the homeowner quite a bit of money. Licenses to sell power back to the grid are usually restricted, even in states they are allowed. If you have a battery system installed, you will no longer have to sell your excess solar energy back to the grid. You'll simply be able to store it in your battery for later use. Thus, homeowners with these systems may not have to apply for licenses for their solar systems, since they will not be doing net-metering. This will allow many users to install solar panels who couldn't before. It removes the ability for utilities and/or state governments to restrict the number of homes with solar panels. This is why these batteries will likely have a huge impact.
Still pretty scary that a simple counter like that can cause a chain of events that chucks off the power completely. How can this be possible?
Yeah. Imagine if it happened on final approach.
I remember supporting an office with win95 and Access. I had tech support conversations that almost went like this:
Him: My computer just crashed.
Me: So what did you do then?
Him: I rebooted it.
Me: Well there's your problem. Reboot the computer again. Then tap the computer gently and pray to the god of your choice and reboot a third time...
Him: ...Thanks. That worked.
Certainly it's preferable to 'Rich people sitting on their wealth'.
The amazing thing about Elon Musk is that when he was a student he actually lived on $1/day for a while. He said that knowing he could live on so little was quite freeing, enabling him to take more risks.
I really don't think of him as your typical billionaire.
Can anyone explain why Jeff Bezos is doing the same thing that SpaceX is already doing ?
To lower cost to orbit .. check
To design re-usable first stages ... check
The only difference I see is that they want to use LOX/LH for first stage. And even then, they plan to go to LOX/LMethane after that.
Of course, competition is always nice to have.
Yeah, the only difference is that Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, two years before Space X was founded, and only just now launched his first rocket. Bezos sounds like the Justin Hammer of the commercial space industry.
Why purchase it in the first place if I still have to rely on the grid? Seems like a waste of money unless it is strictly for backup purposes only. And even then, it won't run what is needed like electric heat or A/C unless you purchase multiple units. Then natural gas and propane generators would be much more cost effective.
You purchase it so that you can store grid electrical energy while the rates are low overnight, and use it when rates are high during peak hours.
Uhhhhhh...gigafactory?
"That's not an argument!!!"
Yeah, it's called posting on an iPad :(
Electric stove, oven, washer, dryer, air conditioning, refrigerator, electric heat, TV, DVR, etc.
There's no way that it would power a home in the US. I can hear the constant squealing of the overload notification already.
Then draw from the grid when you are cooking. Or buy two or three.
Tesla dont make batteries they just buy them from Panasonic, American business in a nutshell, buy $product from Asia and tell everyone you made it, Americas is just Asias best salesman, nothing innovative here (except PR) at all.
Uhhhhhh...gigafactory?
The system is a bit less than 90% efficient.
The internal battery unit runs at 400V to 500V. Look at the spec sheet.
Will future aircraft be able to also make the switch to electric? Yes, of course. Electric driven propellers should do the trick.
Of course, the size of the batteries needed will preclude carrying any passengers or cargo.
I don't think that is necessarily true. One option is to build hybrid electrical airplanes. And if battery power density and durability continues to improve, I think you might be surprised what is possible if you fill the wings of an airplane with electrochemical cells. Elon Musk has speculated that electric airplanes might be possible if we go beyond the incremental improvements of the current players.
There are countless more recent examples I could have written about.
So go ahead then, because I think it's really silly whenever a new Muslim atrocity occurs, especially when it comes to women, that some apologist comes along and talks about things Christians did centuries ago.
Are you obtuse? Did you read what I wrote? I am criticizing monotheism as a whole. I probably despise extremism more than you do. I just see the historical context, and I see aspects of extremism in America that are similar to Islamic extremism. That is not being an apologist. It is being a realist.
Sounds like dystopia to me. Something about a bunch of kindergarteners staring at a giant screen seems very 1984.
I think the truly intractable problem is that such a system would centralize control of the educational system. Centralize it right down to every single word that is presented. The true power of the public education system is that it gives teachers a great deal of independence in what they say in the classroom. Imagine a situation when something terrible happens in our democracy. Someone seizes control. The system gets even more perverted than it already is. Then imagine an educational system where children only received "approved" resources. No independent human teacher. Just video and text. If the children don't get information from the media, then they will effectively be blind to reality.
I know this is hypothetical, but I think it demonstrates my point, that independent teachers are an essential buffer against tyranny emerging in our democracy.
DON'T pretend that "all religions are equally wrong"; they are not.
I don't say that. I assert that mono-theistic religions have shown themselves capable of equally vile fanaticism, most especially when they are combined with the levers of power of the state.. See my post above.
Yes, Christians did that 1500 years ago.
Muslims killed Sabeen Mahmud yesterday.
Pray forgive me if I see the Muslims as a significantly larger threat.
There are countless more recent examples I could have written about. However, Hypatia is in my opinion more relevant. Before 400AD or so, Roman and Greek society was based around classical foundations of rationalism and philosophy. Yes they worshipped gods, but there was tolerance for the worship of many different gods, and by extension tolerance for fundamentally different world-views. Classical civilization created great art, great philosophy, great mathematics, great architecture. We owe our systems of laws, of money, of art/drama to classical Greco-Roman civilization. And the fact that Greco-Roman civilization had flaws (e.g. slavery) does not change the greatness of what they accomplished.
In the early-mid 300AD's Constantine came to power as emperor of the Roman empire. He made Christianity the state religion of the empire. Christianity spread like wildfire, snuffing out anything that opposed it. The instance I referred to earlier, Hypatia's murder, is commonly thought of as the end of the Classical Era. In Hypatia's school, it is possible that astronomers theorized that Earth travelled around the Sun. If an astronomer had thought this, the idea would have been discussed and possibly accepted. In the new christian world, to suggest an such an idea would be blasphemy and would result in the suggester being executed in some gruesome manner.
The adoption of Christianity in as the state religion in Europe led to what is commonly known as the Dark Ages, a period of about 1000 years in which European civilization stagnated. Progress in the arts, in knowledge of the world (what we would call science), in philosophy largely came to a halt. Europeans largely forgot how to build great buildings. This era is thought to have begun to come to an end when European intellectuals began re-discovering Greco-Roman rationalism during the Renaissance, and is exemplified in Florence, when the architect Filippo Brunelleschi re-discovered Roman dome building techniques in order to build il Duomo.
When I see these stone-age islamic fanatics trying to hack away at the edifice of modernity, I cannot help but thinking about what christianity did to European civilization during the Dark Ages. I also cannot help thinking of those in America who so resemble these stone-age fanatics, the christian dominionists and those who can best be described as the American taliban. If you think it is only muslims who are capable of fanaticism, you are fooling your self.
"Hypatia (born c. AD 350 – 370; died 415[1][3]) was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher in Egypt, then a part of the Byzantine Empire. She was the head of the Neoplatonic school at Alexandria, where she taught philosophy and astronomy."
"One day on the streets of Alexandria, Egypt, in the year 415 or 416, a mob of Christian zealots led by Peter the Lector accosted a woman’s carriage and dragged her from it and into a church, where they stripped her and beat her to death with roofing tiles. They then tore her body apart and burned it. Who was this woman and what was her crime? Hypatia was one of the last great thinkers of ancient Alexandria and one of the first women to study and teach mathematics, astronomy and philosophy. Though she is remembered more for her violent death, her dramatic life is a fascinating lens through which we may view the plight of science in an era of religious and sectarian conflict."
I hate these islamic extremists at least as much as anyone here. But it isn't just islam that is capable of such things.