What the other poster said, but more simply: you do have a "total cost", historically, and the odds are that your total cost per month over the next few months will be similar. So, use that as your total cost, padded a bit for safety margin and profit.
What, and high-karma accounts can't be auctioned off as it is? ^_-
Karma whoring involves posting and not being a blatant troll. Only a small percent of Slashdot's readers manage to do that (much more because most prefer to lurk, vs. not being a troll). If commercial value encourage more people to do so, then why not?
The same thing was predicted with GPS-aware cell phones. And you know what? Consumers won't buy it. It has to have good value to the consumer - the way it's usually implemented, merely being advertised to is a negative value - or there's no profit in making it (profit from ads is based on consumers using it, but consumers won't). Remember the non-encoding-scheme DivX?
I don't think this is something we have to fear, unless there is some overriding application that we decide makes it worthwhile for us. There is at least a little honesty left in the system.
If that's so, then one wonders if it would be viable for Microsoft, as a more effective way of breaking into the media biz than its past attempts, might just buy out Sony?
Unless one can find a natural source of antimatter. Which seems unlikely in this solar system, granted, but there have been possibilities sighted around the galaxy...
I think maybe part of the problem is that these equations assume standard motion: one accelerates from 0 to, in this case, 4c, so for any given speed in between, there are at least two moments - one during acceleration, one during deceleration - where one has that speed. Of course, standard acceleration to greater than c is impossible, because as one approaches c, it takes ever-longer amounts of time (with the same acceleration force, or conversely ever-greater acceleration force for the same amount of time) to gain the same increment of speed, and it would take an infinitely long time (or infinitely much force) to accelerate that last little bit. So, some other event must happen to get the traveller from less than c to greater than c, and back again at the destination. Acceleration destroys inertial reference frames (else, just orbiting the Earth at a decent fraction of c then landing and comparing clocks would create a paradox, but this experiment has been run, and the reference frame that did not accelerate was found to have won out); this transition would probably do likewise. (And if the traveller starts off in a different inertial reference frame - say, he's already at 4c when he passes Earth en route to Alpha Centauri - then synchronizing to t=0 becomes meaningless.)
And giant robots, piloted or not, running across the battlefield just screams out "easy kill" to a modern tank or A-10.
Across an open field, sure. But what about in mountains, or forests, or in a city? Or, heck, what about seashore, where they're mostly submerged? "There's a sub somewhere around this location. Grope about 'til you find it, then pick it up and bring it ashore." Or, "dive, swim to this location, stand on the sea bottom, lift this enemy boat out of the water, and carry it into port. Shake 'em around if they try to get cute with depth charges."
No, actually there was a Triforce of Power, a Triforce of Wisdom, and a Triforce of Courage. Perhaps they meant "the piece of the Triforce that most resonates with this aspect", but those were the given names.
Power. No mere hardware currently on the market can give you the wisdom to install it within your computer (though books and manuals can help here), nor the courage to play as you wish in defiance of various licensing agreements (though certain chemicals can help here).
Yeah, but we'll all just use the Gameshark code to create one out of thin air.
What do you mean, there's no Gameshark for real life? You mean I've been going around doing all this dangerous stuff and I haven't been in God mode? ^_^;
The difference with a media monopoly: the public avenues of communication get choked off. By analogy, what if you wanted to ship physical evidence of something from point A to point B, but this something was a crime committed by the company that bought FedEx, UPS, and the USPS (from the government, after lubricating enough hands with money to get any restrictions against said purchase lifted)? Said company could price all other local carriers out of business, then refuse to accept (or "lose") your package. Want to complain? Some critical part of the filing process can only be done by registered mail...by USPS. Since the politicians never hear from you (since every message you send gets blocked), you're "obviously" satisfied with this service...
In an inertial reference frame [which is what I have used] it is possible [even easy] to have perfectly synchronised clocks between all observers - i.e. they all agree on the coordinates of all locations and times.
Aye. The problem happens when you try coordinating these with clocks outside of that reference frame - say, between the v=3c/5 observer, the v=4c FTL traveller, and the v=0 (or practically so) people on Earth and Alpha Centauri. That's where relativity comes in - thus the derivation from "relative".
Basically though, you don't understand relativity.
No, I do. But I see the same confusion between "happened" and "observed to happen" in many discussions of relativity, even among professional phsyicists.
if (delta x)v/c^2 > (delta t) then in the second frame the events happen in the opposite order to the first frame.
Instead of "the events happen", try "the events are observed to happen". Observation of an act, and the actual act, are not the same thing - witness, for example, any number of examples where you hear an action some kilometers away many seconds after the action actually happens (and being blind or not blind - i.e., being able to observe the light from the action or not being able to observe the light - makes no difference as to when the action actually happens).
I could argue the equations, but I suspect this is the fundamental disconnect from which any errors in the equations, or in interpretation of the equations, flow - including the exact application of the Lorentz transformation in this instance.
This particular example does not work. When the ship arrives at Alpha Centauri, observers at AC send a signal not to send the ship. However, the signal itself takes four years - travelling at the speed of light - to reach Earth. Meanwhile, the AC observers see the ship leave Earth - but that does not mean the departure actually happened at that time. Causality is preserved, like so:
Year N - ship leaves Earth
Year N+2 - ship arrives at Alpha Centauri, signal is sent to not send ship
Year N+4 - observers at Alpha Centauri see the ship leave Earth
Year N+6 - Earth receives signal to not send ship, but can not comply since the act happened 6 years ago.
Have sex that results in conception (not 100% guaranteed, but things can be done to improve the odds).
Wait nine months, during which the incubator has higher than normal support costs.
To make a new AI, given prior AIs:
Purchase and assemble the hardware. Even with shipping delays and labor, this will probably take less than two weeks, and is as close to 100% guaranteed as makes no difference.
Copy the AI software, then start it up.
Not to mention, you know ahead of time more or less what the new AI will be like, much more so than the new human. And the new AI doesn't have to relearn everything its parent did. Not that there aren't cases where the benefits of a new human wouldn't outweigh that of a new AI (at least, until AIs and augmented humans start becoming almost indistinguishable, but that's another topic entirely)...
And what if you encoded, say, a CD's worth of information into the "junk" DNA of a clone? (It wouldn't be an exact clone with the extra info, of course, but close enough.)
I could possibly see flamebait, but in a good way. I suspect most of the down-modders just think she's an impostor. (If anyone's meta-modding it, though, I think this is among the clearest examples of unfair moderation, much moreso than the thread to which I will not link.)
You have a girlfriend? What's her last name?.gif or.jpg?
Hey, for all we know, there might be a.fent file format in use somewhere. (Probably obscure, though, especially since it goes over 3 letters.)
Slashdot Mirror
That's a problem for any high-density energy storage application: there's a lot of energy in a small space, so what if it gets released all at once?
What the other poster said, but more simply: you do have a "total cost", historically, and the odds are that your total cost per month over the next few months will be similar. So, use that as your total cost, padded a bit for safety margin and profit.
The same thing was predicted with GPS-aware cell phones. And you know what? Consumers won't buy it. It has to have good value to the consumer - the way it's usually implemented, merely being advertised to is a negative value - or there's no profit in making it (profit from ads is based on consumers using it, but consumers won't). Remember the non-encoding-scheme DivX?
I don't think this is something we have to fear, unless there is some overriding application that we decide makes it worthwhile for us. There is at least a little honesty left in the system.
If that's so, then one wonders if it would be viable for Microsoft, as a more effective way of breaking into the media biz than its past attempts, might just buy out Sony?
I fail to see how a comic artist's "rant" about economy is newsworthy. Perhaps an attempt to plug one's own site?
Dude...have you seen how many times MT's banner ad pops up here? They've gotta be one of the top advertisers.
Unless one can find a natural source of antimatter. Which seems unlikely in this solar system, granted, but there have been possibilities sighted around the galaxy...
Hmm. Interesting problem.
I think maybe part of the problem is that these equations assume standard motion: one accelerates from 0 to, in this case, 4c, so for any given speed in between, there are at least two moments - one during acceleration, one during deceleration - where one has that speed. Of course, standard acceleration to greater than c is impossible, because as one approaches c, it takes ever-longer amounts of time (with the same acceleration force, or conversely ever-greater acceleration force for the same amount of time) to gain the same increment of speed, and it would take an infinitely long time (or infinitely much force) to accelerate that last little bit. So, some other event must happen to get the traveller from less than c to greater than c, and back again at the destination. Acceleration destroys inertial reference frames (else, just orbiting the Earth at a decent fraction of c then landing and comparing clocks would create a paradox, but this experiment has been run, and the reference frame that did not accelerate was found to have won out); this transition would probably do likewise. (And if the traveller starts off in a different inertial reference frame - say, he's already at 4c when he passes Earth en route to Alpha Centauri - then synchronizing to t=0 becomes meaningless.)
And giant robots, piloted or not, running across the battlefield just screams out "easy kill" to a modern tank or A-10.
Across an open field, sure. But what about in mountains, or forests, or in a city? Or, heck, what about seashore, where they're mostly submerged? "There's a sub somewhere around this location. Grope about 'til you find it, then pick it up and bring it ashore." Or, "dive, swim to this location, stand on the sea bottom, lift this enemy boat out of the water, and carry it into port. Shake 'em around if they try to get cute with depth charges."
found myself a place within Enron's accounting department
;)
As a garbageman, right? I mean, someone had to dispose of all those documents...
Who is the government to decide if my requirements (not just technical but personality, appearance, other less-quantifiable things) are sufficient?
The same government that sets the laws saying that certain factors, like skin color and gender, are illegal to use in this situation.
No, actually there was a Triforce of Power, a Triforce of Wisdom, and a Triforce of Courage. Perhaps they meant "the piece of the Triforce that most resonates with this aspect", but those were the given names.
Power. No mere hardware currently on the market can give you the wisdom to install it within your computer (though books and manuals can help here), nor the courage to play as you wish in defiance of various licensing agreements (though certain chemicals can help here).
Yeah, but we'll all just use the Gameshark code to create one out of thin air.
What do you mean, there's no Gameshark for real life? You mean I've been going around doing all this dangerous stuff and I haven't been in God mode? ^_^;
The difference with a media monopoly: the public avenues of communication get choked off. By analogy, what if you wanted to ship physical evidence of something from point A to point B, but this something was a crime committed by the company that bought FedEx, UPS, and the USPS (from the government, after lubricating enough hands with money to get any restrictions against said purchase lifted)? Said company could price all other local carriers out of business, then refuse to accept (or "lose") your package. Want to complain? Some critical part of the filing process can only be done by registered mail...by USPS. Since the politicians never hear from you (since every message you send gets blocked), you're "obviously" satisfied with this service...
In an inertial reference frame [which is what I have used] it is possible [even easy] to have perfectly synchronised clocks between all observers - i.e. they all agree on the coordinates of all locations and times.
Aye. The problem happens when you try coordinating these with clocks outside of that reference frame - say, between the v=3c/5 observer, the v=4c FTL traveller, and the v=0 (or practically so) people on Earth and Alpha Centauri. That's where relativity comes in - thus the derivation from "relative".
Basically though, you don't understand relativity.
No, I do. But I see the same confusion between "happened" and "observed to happen" in many discussions of relativity, even among professional phsyicists.
I think I see the problem.
if (delta x)v/c^2 > (delta t) then in the second frame the events happen in the opposite order to the first frame.
Instead of "the events happen", try "the events are observed to happen". Observation of an act, and the actual act, are not the same thing - witness, for example, any number of examples where you hear an action some kilometers away many seconds after the action actually happens (and being blind or not blind - i.e., being able to observe the light from the action or not being able to observe the light - makes no difference as to when the action actually happens).
I could argue the equations, but I suspect this is the fundamental disconnect from which any errors in the equations, or in interpretation of the equations, flow - including the exact application of the Lorentz transformation in this instance.
- Have sex that results in conception (not 100% guaranteed, but things can be done to improve the odds).
- Wait nine months, during which the incubator has higher than normal support costs.
To make a new AI, given prior AIs:Not to mention, you know ahead of time more or less what the new AI will be like, much more so than the new human. And the new AI doesn't have to relearn everything its parent did. Not that there aren't cases where the benefits of a new human wouldn't outweigh that of a new AI (at least, until AIs and augmented humans start becoming almost indistinguishable, but that's another topic entirely)...
And what if you encoded, say, a CD's worth of information into the "junk" DNA of a clone? (It wouldn't be an exact clone with the extra info, of course, but close enough.)
And another...
http://www.megatokyo.com/index.php?strip_id=200
Check below the comic.
Duplicate post, and modded up both times. Nice karma, if you can get it. ;)
All three. Like the man said, Slashdot editors are TOUGH! ;)
Even tougher now:
.gif or .jpg?
.fent file format in use somewhere. (Probably obscure, though, especially since it goes over 3 letters.)
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=1, Troll=1, Insightful=2, Informative=5, Overrated=2, Total=11.
I could possibly see flamebait, but in a good way. I suspect most of the down-modders just think she's an impostor. (If anyone's meta-modding it, though, I think this is among the clearest examples of unfair moderation, much moreso than the thread to which I will not link.)
You have a girlfriend? What's her last name?
Hey, for all we know, there might be a