I live in a pretty stable European country. The basic technology and political landscape hasn't changed significantly for decades.
I still think you're just so used to it that you don't notice.
Decades ago: -Petrol was leaded. -Acid rain was common. -Asbestos was commonly used. -You went to the bank if you wanted to pay something, or used cheques. -Only the rich, or no-one had mobile phones. -There was no www, and no social networks. People wrote letters. -Overseas phonecalls often involved queueing. -Air travel was at a minimum slightly glamorous. -The EU was several treaties younger and much smaller, and required unanimity in decisions. -There was no euro. -Colour prints were still expensive. -You couldn't really publish things without the help of a large company. -Homosexuality was commonly taboo. Today registration or even marriage is common. -The left was still a vital political force in the vast majority of countries back then, and it actually differed from the right.
Basically, the changes in decades past dwarf the changes portrayed by Soulskill's text. It's possible that you define basic technology in some special way - but even then it's not relevant, since you're arguing that the text is unrealistic, and the changes in real life are much greater.
Are you American? Back here in Europe it would be foolish to think nothing is going to change. Ever since the late 80s things have been changing constantly, and not even Western Europe has avoided this.
In Estonia they went from a Soviet bureaucracy to electronic voting in 15 years! Things will change, broaden your horizons.
I think it was when Slashdot turned 10 that someone linked an OLD main page (or normal) post which was basically just CmdrTaco saying he had bought enough underwear that he now had "a full set" or something.
The point was that this *really* was his blog a long time ago. Unfortunately I didn't save the link, and no one has managed to find the post since despite repeated attempts.
If you make writing daily reports someone's job, chances are that's exactly what it'll become. Meaning they concentrate on things that look good in the report, and little else. For an example, consider how the No Child Left Behind standardised follow-up system has made teaching/studying with only tests in mind common.
If mutual accountability is desired, I think communicating with (talking to!) other people is much better.
Philips bulbs hit 90% brightness in under 1 second, and full brightness in 30 seconds. They are pretty cheap too.
This just reinforces my impression that CFLs are still immature.
I've replaced all bulbs except the ones in the oven and microwave, mostly with Philips Softone-branded CFLs. They imitate the shape and light of tungsten bulbs exceptionally well. I like them and will keep buying them.
However, they take at least *15 seconds* to get to 90% light. I wouln't be surprised if it takes a minute. Whereas other models of the same brand appear to be really fast. With CFLs YMMV.
Even if I do bash the swedish speaking people for political reasons in every single turn I can, this comment was total crap as it has no factual basis. Teaching swedish is a totally different matter than acting for swedish language to be mandatory in curriculum.
Word. I'll add to that that espousing mandatory Swedish education and being Finland-Swedish are not the same thing either.
I do hope you're really bashing the Swedish-speaking support of mandatory language education rather than my minority itself, but I can't really tell which one it is from your comment.
Hey, I'm a Swedish-speaker and that was an excellent post.
I guess I'm still in the minority in my language group in wanting to abolish the compulsory education in the other domestic language, but things are changing - no one should believe that the voice of the minority's political establishment is the voice of the minority.
Also while there are exceptions most have no reason other than the compulsory education to feel animosity towards us Swedish-speakers. The vast majority would have better things to do than hate a language if the language education was changed, and there might even be goodwill generated.
If on the other hand the compulsory education is removed by the other parties while there is political resistance from the Swedish People's Party then there will be lots of badwill for no gain for the minority.
The topic you complain of (complexity of installing software) is a topic that can be mastered in very little time. Gaining a working understanding the linux filesystem, paths, editing config files, and basic use of make would take the average person only a few hours of study. Add the ability to copy/paste messages into google and follow instructions, and installing software simply will not be a difficult task any more.
I don't need to say "would", unfortunately. I can say "wouldn't" though.
I can use the much-maligned GIMP just fine and I build my computers from parts. I use wget for downloads. Recently I installed a printer which doesn't have drivers on my distro. I read man pages and use many command line utils just fine.
And yet despite clearly being above the average user I've done tens of hours of installing software and compiling and Googling, and I still don't know how it works properly, on the well-supported Ubuntu no less.
I believe you're being perfectly sincere. However, you need to realize just how much knowledge you have about the OS. That and the fact that learning it adequately in less than a day is *completely* unrealistic.
As a single-booting but casual Linux user I don't really know if these libraries are what makes distributing software such a pain, but whatever the reason is something needs to change, and the point about software distribution was spot on.
Package management is nice, but if something isn't available through it I won't install it. Why not? Because: * I have to compile it myself. This often results in errors which I can't handle. * I have to edit config files. Might be xorg.conf, might be something else. All I know is someone failed to make it work out of the box properly. Things will break. * I have to find the application. Yes, that's right: often applications leave no trace after installing, especially when using a manager. They're buried in the complex-just-cause Unixey filesystem. Typing the name into the CLI fails too of course.
Now all of these problems can be solved, some seemingly trivially. This doesn't matter - the fact that I can edit xorg.conf means I'm probably in the top 3-5% of all computer users as far as Linux goes, meaning it could just as well be impossible for a normal user.
Users are used to the Windows XP interface and Linux is frequently more like it than Windows 7 is, so the exterior isn't a problem. The ACTUAL usability problem is installing software - it needs to work universally so people can actually do things and therefore be interested in and dependent on the OS.
What are we going to do with a space elevator on the moon? We don't go there for a very good reason: Its expensive as hell. Making the cheap and easy part a little cheaper an easier isn't going to change the fact that the entire rest of the trip is prohibitively expensive.
For the Apollo missions, they needed their rockets to use fuel to lift the fuel that carried the payload that was fuel for the lunar descent to retard the fuel needed to lift the fuel for the ascent. It gets complicated pretty quickly.
Absolutely none of this was of course free, and the most expensive substances were those at the lunar end - every gram has a much larger fuel equivalent at the start of the process.
It will still be expensive to go there even with the elevator, but any reduction in price will inevitably create new applications. The obvious example being sample return: scientists want all the moon they can get, and rock from a single point on the equator will do just fine.
From what I understand, the plamsa is confined by a magnetic field, but not perfectly. So, when some plasma ions go astray, they've gotta hit a material that can take high temperature. The beryllium is probably converted into some useful atom by a nuclear process when this happens.
The process creates plasma, which should be chemically destructive. Beryllium and tungsten sound like usual suspects for such an application.
The nuclear part comes from the nuclear reaction - it produces neutrons aka the worst type of radiation. This will transmute elements, and is hard to block. It's better blocked by light elements so Beryllium might have been picked due to that too. I'd guess the mentioned elements transform into something (relatively) benign, since the experts wouldn't pick something that transforms wholesale into Strontium-90.
I'm not a physicist either so any experts are welcome to correct me too!
In reality Sally Ride's personality dissolved into nothingness at the moment her brain's neurons broke connection with one another when they were deprived of oxygen.
I won't comment on the religion discussion here, since there's something more relevant to say:
Regardless of what what you or anyone else thinks about religion your above line is a total dickhead response to someone else's passing. You're trying to further your opinion while giving off the impression of having no empathy whatsoever.
I hope it's a role you play only on the Internet and that you actually behave like a human when you hear of someone's passing in real life.
Likewise the compostional argument works in favor of demotion as well. Working outward we have rocky inner planets, two gas giants, two ice giants, and then a buttload of comparitively very tiny solid icy bodies, that when they get perturbed and wander closer, get called comets. I don't understand the emotion behind the debate.
The best idea of what to do with the planet definition I've seen so far is to scrap it. Planets are originally things that move about in the sky. Now it's used for something or other because we're not comfortable with the now thousands of planets that exist under the old definition.
There are several problems with the kinds of planets you mentioned. Currently a planet is (in practice): 1) A rocky round body OR 2) A large gaseous body OR 3) A large gaseous "icy" body. The problem being that if you take a large KBO, Mercury and Jupiter, the two planets certainly will not have the most in common (radii about 1000, 2500 and 69000 km, respectively.) It's possible to build a definition that includes only eight planets, but it will give you a collection of bodies that have nothing else in common.
The planet definition is temporary in any case since it specifically doesn't apply outside the Sol system. I think the science should really throw it away as far as it can, so that the public can use the word however it wants without science being disturbed, while astronomers could stop playing unnecessary politics.
Slashdot Mirror
I live in a pretty stable European country. The basic technology and political landscape hasn't changed significantly for decades.
I still think you're just so used to it that you don't notice.
Decades ago:
-Petrol was leaded.
-Acid rain was common.
-Asbestos was commonly used.
-You went to the bank if you wanted to pay something, or used cheques.
-Only the rich, or no-one had mobile phones.
-There was no www, and no social networks. People wrote letters.
-Overseas phonecalls often involved queueing.
-Air travel was at a minimum slightly glamorous.
-The EU was several treaties younger and much smaller, and required unanimity in decisions.
-There was no euro.
-Colour prints were still expensive.
-You couldn't really publish things without the help of a large company.
-Homosexuality was commonly taboo. Today registration or even marriage is common.
-The left was still a vital political force in the vast majority of countries back then, and it actually differed from the right.
Basically, the changes in decades past dwarf the changes portrayed by Soulskill's text. It's possible that you define basic technology in some special way - but even then it's not relevant, since you're arguing that the text is unrealistic, and the changes in real life are much greater.
Are you American? Back here in Europe it would be foolish to think nothing is going to change. Ever since the late 80s things have been changing constantly, and not even Western Europe has avoided this.
In Estonia they went from a Soviet bureaucracy to electronic voting in 15 years! Things will change, broaden your horizons.
I think it was when Slashdot turned 10 that someone linked an OLD main page (or normal) post which was basically just CmdrTaco saying he had bought enough underwear that he now had "a full set" or something.
The point was that this *really* was his blog a long time ago. Unfortunately I didn't save the link, and no one has managed to find the post since despite repeated attempts.
Too bad really, it was a historical moment. : )
Meanwhile this triggered a really interesting discussion with a lot of informative posts. Good enough for me.
If you make writing daily reports someone's job, chances are that's exactly what it'll become. Meaning they concentrate on things that look good in the report, and little else. For an example, consider how the No Child Left Behind standardised follow-up system has made teaching/studying with only tests in mind common.
If mutual accountability is desired, I think communicating with (talking to!) other people is much better.
Philips bulbs hit 90% brightness in under 1 second, and full brightness in 30 seconds. They are pretty cheap too.
This just reinforces my impression that CFLs are still immature.
I've replaced all bulbs except the ones in the oven and microwave, mostly with Philips Softone-branded CFLs. They imitate the shape and light of tungsten bulbs exceptionally well. I like them and will keep buying them.
However, they take at least *15 seconds* to get to 90% light. I wouln't be surprised if it takes a minute. Whereas other models of the same brand appear to be really fast. With CFLs YMMV.
Heh, you tried to build a Beowulf cluster in there, didn't you?
Heh yeah. Stuff like http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=77714&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&tid=88&mode=thread&cid=6905002 . Or the recent fake "this was removed by dice" messages someone (not me) came up with. Or why not http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?threshold=-1&mode=nested&commentsort=0&op=Change&sid=6106&cid=991736&pid=991736.
But really this stuff cannot adequately be conveyed by the links. One just has to browse a bit, like you say.
And no need for -1 really: at least in the past it was possible to give trolls a +6 bonus, which is just great.
This post was removed due to Dice content standards violations.
Even if I do bash the swedish speaking people for political reasons in every single turn I can, this comment was total crap as it has no factual basis. Teaching swedish is a totally different matter than acting for swedish language to be mandatory in curriculum.
Word. I'll add to that that espousing mandatory Swedish education and being Finland-Swedish are not the same thing either.
I do hope you're really bashing the Swedish-speaking support of mandatory language education rather than my minority itself, but I can't really tell which one it is from your comment.
Hey, I'm a Swedish-speaker and that was an excellent post.
I guess I'm still in the minority in my language group in wanting to abolish the compulsory education in the other domestic language, but things are changing - no one should believe that the voice of the minority's political establishment is the voice of the minority.
Also while there are exceptions most have no reason other than the compulsory education to feel animosity towards us Swedish-speakers. The vast majority would have better things to do than hate a language if the language education was changed, and there might even be goodwill generated.
If on the other hand the compulsory education is removed by the other parties while there is political resistance from the Swedish People's Party then there will be lots of badwill for no gain for the minority.
Proceed to room 101 for the rat inspection, Citizen.
The topic you complain of (complexity of installing software) is a topic that can be mastered in very little time. Gaining a working understanding the linux filesystem, paths, editing config files, and basic use of make would take the average person only a few hours of study. Add the ability to copy/paste messages into google and follow instructions, and installing software simply will not be a difficult task any more.
I don't need to say "would", unfortunately. I can say "wouldn't" though.
I can use the much-maligned GIMP just fine and I build my computers from parts. I use wget for downloads. Recently I installed a printer which doesn't have drivers on my distro. I read man pages and use many command line utils just fine.
And yet despite clearly being above the average user I've done tens of hours of installing software and compiling and Googling, and I still don't know how it works properly, on the well-supported Ubuntu no less.
I believe you're being perfectly sincere. However, you need to realize just how much knowledge you have about the OS. That and the fact that learning it adequately in less than a day is *completely* unrealistic.
As a single-booting but casual Linux user I don't really know if these libraries are what makes distributing software such a pain, but whatever the reason is something needs to change, and the point about software distribution was spot on.
Package management is nice, but if something isn't available through it I won't install it. Why not? Because:
* I have to compile it myself. This often results in errors which I can't handle.
* I have to edit config files. Might be xorg.conf, might be something else. All I know is someone failed to make it work out of the box properly. Things will break.
* I have to find the application. Yes, that's right: often applications leave no trace after installing, especially when using a manager. They're buried in the complex-just-cause Unixey filesystem. Typing the name into the CLI fails too of course.
Now all of these problems can be solved, some seemingly trivially. This doesn't matter - the fact that I can edit xorg.conf means I'm probably in the top 3-5% of all computer users as far as Linux goes, meaning it could just as well be impossible for a normal user.
Users are used to the Windows XP interface and Linux is frequently more like it than Windows 7 is, so the exterior isn't a problem. The ACTUAL usability problem is installing software - it needs to work universally so people can actually do things and therefore be interested in and dependent on the OS.
What are we going to do with a space elevator on the moon? We don't go there for a very good reason: Its expensive as hell. Making the cheap and easy part a little cheaper an easier isn't going to change the fact that the entire rest of the trip is prohibitively expensive.
For the Apollo missions, they needed their rockets to use fuel to lift the fuel that carried the payload that was fuel for the lunar descent to retard the fuel needed to lift the fuel for the ascent. It gets complicated pretty quickly.
Absolutely none of this was of course free, and the most expensive substances were those at the lunar end - every gram has a much larger fuel equivalent at the start of the process.
It will still be expensive to go there even with the elevator, but any reduction in price will inevitably create new applications. The obvious example being sample return: scientists want all the moon they can get, and rock from a single point on the equator will do just fine.
Thanks, great post.
(I worked too hard this summer and spent too little time here, I seem to only get mod points occasionally right now : )
I'm sure it works better than trying to block the DDRT protein.
From what I understand, the plamsa is confined by a magnetic field, but not perfectly. So, when some plasma ions go astray, they've gotta hit a material that can take high temperature. The beryllium is probably converted into some useful atom by a nuclear process when this happens.
The process creates plasma, which should be chemically destructive. Beryllium and tungsten sound like usual suspects for such an application.
The nuclear part comes from the nuclear reaction - it produces neutrons aka the worst type of radiation. This will transmute elements, and is hard to block. It's better blocked by light elements so Beryllium might have been picked due to that too. I'd guess the mentioned elements transform into something (relatively) benign, since the experts wouldn't pick something that transforms wholesale into Strontium-90.
I'm not a physicist either so any experts are welcome to correct me too!
I think it's still not as good as "Scientists Create Supersoldier from Helium."
Okay so that was someone misreading "Supersolid" but I'm still going to pretend otherwise!
Ah, thank you AC.
But maybe the part about the radio is just what they want us to think?
It goes much further than the V-2 connection. But I don't want to spoil it all so let's leave it at that.
Now tell me why the secretary is allowed to be a dick and break the written rules in that situation.
Anyone else read Gravity's Rainbow and think what they're doing is eerily familiar?
I giggle every time I hear about these guys, since they remind me of all that absurdity.
In reality Sally Ride's personality dissolved into nothingness at the moment her brain's neurons broke connection with one another when they were deprived of oxygen.
I won't comment on the religion discussion here, since there's something more relevant to say:
Regardless of what what you or anyone else thinks about religion your above line is a total dickhead response to someone else's passing. You're trying to further your opinion while giving off the impression of having no empathy whatsoever.
I hope it's a role you play only on the Internet and that you actually behave like a human when you hear of someone's passing in real life.
Likewise the compostional argument works in favor of demotion as well. Working outward we have rocky inner planets, two gas giants, two ice giants, and then a buttload of comparitively very tiny solid icy bodies, that when they get perturbed and wander closer, get called comets. I don't understand the emotion behind the debate.
The best idea of what to do with the planet definition I've seen so far is to scrap it. Planets are originally things that move about in the sky. Now it's used for something or other because we're not comfortable with the now thousands of planets that exist under the old definition.
There are several problems with the kinds of planets you mentioned. Currently a planet is (in practice): 1) A rocky round body OR 2) A large gaseous body OR 3) A large gaseous "icy" body. The problem being that if you take a large KBO, Mercury and Jupiter, the two planets certainly will not have the most in common (radii about 1000, 2500 and 69000 km, respectively.) It's possible to build a definition that includes only eight planets, but it will give you a collection of bodies that have nothing else in common.
The planet definition is temporary in any case since it specifically doesn't apply outside the Sol system. I think the science should really throw it away as far as it can, so that the public can use the word however it wants without science being disturbed, while astronomers could stop playing unnecessary politics.