This is, without a doubt, spectacularly cool. I certainly won't deny it.
BUT
I really doubt if this (or something like it) will ever play a significant role in the way news is disseminated.
Given the medium of television, news shows play a logical role. Since TV is a one-way, one-speed presentation medium, news shows perform the role of deciding what you want to find out about, and presenting the information in the format(s) you most want.
How effective they are at filling this role is a different question, of course, but that's the role they fill.
The web, however, is a completely different animal. It's a two-way, any-speed medium. Various formats have evolved to take advantage of this, allowing users to select the information they're interested in (often by selecting sources which provide more interesting news than not, with the ability to skip news that falls under "not"), along with selecting what kind of information (text, sound, video) they want to see.
Given these abilities (already provided by a multitude of news sources, among them the sources this project is using), does a news anchor - even one named Dr. Gordan Freeman - serve any real function beyond "hey, that's kind of nifty?"
I doubt it. But I kind of hope I'm wrong, because it really is kind of nifty.
Isn't this the sort of problem that might be well-addressed with genetic algorithms? We've got a problem that we can't really define well (mathematically), but we know what good results should look like. So the actualy process to solve the problem is hard to design, but a test for good results is (comparatively) easy to design.
That sounds exactly like the sort of problem that you could use GAs on.
Unless, of course, I'm completely wrong about the state of the art in genetic algorithms, or am making some other fundamental error in my reasoning.
That's why I'm going back to buying CDs now that Allofmp3.com is basically gone.
Huh?
Unless this happened late last night, I don't have any idea what you could be talking about. Just yesterday I finished buying/downloading several tracks from them*, after putting money in my account a couple days previous.
*These, notably, were songs I already owned on CD - the cost of music on AoMP3.com is such that I'd rather pay them than find the CDs I want then swap them in and out of the drive when I only want MP3 copies of a couple tracks off each. I freely admit, this may or may not be legal, but I maintain that it's perfectly ethical.
I read Jon Katz, sir, and Bennett, sir, is no Jon Katz. He didn't use the word "Hellmouth" even once!
Though, to be perfectly honest, while I might have disagreed with him some, and he may have had a tendency towards melodrama, I miss the role Jon Katz filled on/. - we don't see articles of any length or real analysis anymore (or at least, far, far fewer of them). Obviously,/.'s central function is the blurb/discussion news format, but I really think a guy like Jon Katz had a positive role to play, adding full, original articles to the mix.
OTOH, if that's the role Bennett is shooting for, he'll need to do a lot better than this. Katz always came across as though he had really thought about what he was writing, even if I thought he was wrong. This was the same level of analysis as the front page blurbs are, but longer and less focussed.
(spelling nazis: yes, I put two 's's in focussed. Also busses and gasses. Levelled and travelled. I spell judgement with an 'e', too.)
I can't help pointing out that water does not, in fact, swirl the "wrong way" on the other side of the equator. The coriolis effect which purportedly causes this is far, far too small a force compared to any other influences (shape of the container, direction the water is sprayed into it, a butterfly in Puerto Rico) to cause this, the Simpsons notwithstanding.
Where this effect does appear is in large air masses, or perfectly still, shallow pans of water tens of meters across.
To be fair, it's not that incomplete. I felt a lot better when I finished KOTOR2 than I did when I encountered the end of (note that I don't say "finished") Halo2.
There's at least one major plotline, however, which is frustratingly incomplete.
Nah. Level 0 NPCs with a class get an automatic max roll on that class' appropriate hit die. Level 0 NPCs without a class get 6 HP (default hit die is 1d6). Yes, this does mean that a non-classed NPC will have more HP than a level 0 or 1 magic user, but them's the breaks.
But if you're going to fly there and find out, you'd better hurry: the Cheops close at 5:00. And make sure you check out the camels, they're without peer amid the mammals...
OK - let's shoot for reducing acceleration from gravity from 9.8N to.98N, as you suggest.
Gravity falls off according to the inverse-square law. So, to achieve 1/10 the force of gravity, you need to get sqrt(10) times as far away from the center of gravity of the planet. So we have to get just over 3.1 times as far from the center of gravity as we currently are.
So, how far from the surface is that? Let's assume that the planet is a perfect sphere of uniform density, which will make the center of gravity (conveniently) co-located with the center of the planet. According to Google, the radius of the earth is 6,378.1 km, but we're using two sig figs for the multiplication, so we'll call it 6,300 km. Obviously, three times that is 19,000 km. Subtract the 6,300 km we're already at, and we're at 12,000 km.
Now, explaing to me again how it's so much more feasible to build a tower 12,000 km tall than it is to build the tether with a counterweight?
If you can make tether that strong and light, you can use N of them to make tower stand. Materials for such tower also can be very very light and very very hard. But probably to not such greater extent tether has to be strong.
What makes super-super-strong tether in your mind possible and super-hard and super-light tower impossible?
Well, for one thing, tensile strength and compressive strength aren't the same thing. A substance which would withstand the pulling force of a fixed space elevator (from earth's surface through GSO to a counterweight) would not necessarily be able to withstand the compressive force of supporting its own weight.
Then there's the balance issue. If you build a tether with its center of mass at GSO, it's in free orbit around the planet. This means it has zero chance of falling over, whereas a shorter tower's center of mass would need to always be over its surface footprint. The higher you make the tower, obviously, the harder this is to maintain.
If you can make tether that strong and light, you can use N of them to make tower stand. Materials for such tower also can be very very light and very very hard. But probably to not such greater extent tether has to be strong.
This is simply untrue. If I'm standing on top of a building and lower a rope to the ground, someone can climb it. This doesn't mean you can build a tower of that height out of the same material (a rope). (In this analogy, the top of the building is the counterweight on the end of the tether, which holds it taut)
But how heavy it would have to have? I shiver to even think that thing might alter (or even de-orbit) Earth. The wikipedia page doesn't answer that question.
It doesn't answer this question for the same reason it doesn't answer the question of whether the Klingons will think that the tether is a threat to them, and therefore attack the human race: it's a complete non-issue. For one thing, the earth gets heavier every day, as crap from space falls into it (from dust all the way up to visible meteors), probably more in a year than the mass of the asteroid counterweight. I'm not worried about de-orbiting the planet anytime soon, are you?
If you're really worried about it, let's make the counterweight out of material taken from the planet, thereby not changing the planet's mass at all, and therefore not affecting its orbit around the sun.
I don't think you grasp how much mass and velocity the planet has.
I realize, of course, that any answer you give to this question may not be valid a couple years down the road, but as of now:
Does the release of IE7 mark the beginning of a more aggressive development/release cycle for Internet Explorer? That is, we are all aware of various aspects of CSS, for example, that are not currently supported in IE (though kudos on all the progress in this direction you've made): can we expect updates to IE, either as service packs, point releases, or new versions, that will provide better standards support in the relatively near future? Or will we be limited to security fixes for the foreseeable future, as with IE6?
This reminds me of an anecdote I read somewhere, the details of which I mostly forget. So I wouldn't believe it, if I were you, but it's still amusing.
Dr. Smith is a medical researcher, helping run one end of a typical double-blind clinical trial of Unobtainasil, a new drug which is hoped to treat a severe condition. He's flying to Switzerland for a conference of some kind.
While in the airport, he happens to sit down next to Dr. Jones, whom he met a while back at another conference. They get to talking shop, as is not surprising - and it eventually comes out that Dr. Jones is also working on the clinical trials of Unobtainasil.
With great dismay, they realize they've just compromised the trial, and all the data will probably need to be thrown out.
Whoops.
Moral of the story: never talk about anything with anyone.
The problem with your argument is that it denies the very existence of expertise. You could apply the same argument to surgeons performing triple bypasses, and thereby "prove" that you're just as well off asking your mechanic to operate on you as you are going to Johns Hopkins.
All you've really demonstrated is that it's possible to come up with false positives when determining expertise. This is not a surprising answer.
I should think so, yes - at an annual salary of £21,000, even before taxes, you're talking about £1,750 a month. Even at US tax rates (which I believe to be lower than UK), that becomes ~£1,300. That makes £500 more than a third of the household's monthly income!
In the US, the $580 price of the PS3 (this figure is reached by weighting the average of the high price with the low price with respect to their percentages of production) is less than 25% of my monthly income and around 10% of my household monthly income (both figures being after taxes, before living expenses) - and it's still not something I'd just go out and buy on a whim.
I have no idea what average rent/mortgage payments are in the UK, but making a completely unsubstantiated assumption that they approach that of the US (in terms of percentage of take-home pay), the PS3 is right around (possibly higher than!) a full rent payment.
I don't see how that can possibly be an impulse buy for any reasonable person.
Slashdot Mirror
Sony followed that up by offering a free 'Talladega Nights' Blu-ray with the first 500,000 PlayStation 3 units sold in the U.S..
...and here I thought corporations only focused on the short-term.
Given their production rates, I expect that promotion to last through 2007...
With mint frosting!
[wasting time until the 20 second mark...18 one thousand, 19 one thousand, 20... SUBMIT!]
Ah...the penny drops.
Bad news, but good to know. Thanks.
This just in!
"They're waiting for you, Gordon - in the test chamber."
Cutscene at 11.
This is, without a doubt, spectacularly cool. I certainly won't deny it.
BUT
I really doubt if this (or something like it) will ever play a significant role in the way news is disseminated.
Given the medium of television, news shows play a logical role. Since TV is a one-way, one-speed presentation medium, news shows perform the role of deciding what you want to find out about, and presenting the information in the format(s) you most want.
How effective they are at filling this role is a different question, of course, but that's the role they fill.
The web, however, is a completely different animal. It's a two-way, any-speed medium. Various formats have evolved to take advantage of this, allowing users to select the information they're interested in (often by selecting sources which provide more interesting news than not, with the ability to skip news that falls under "not"), along with selecting what kind of information (text, sound, video) they want to see.
Given these abilities (already provided by a multitude of news sources, among them the sources this project is using), does a news anchor - even one named Dr. Gordan Freeman - serve any real function beyond "hey, that's kind of nifty?"
I doubt it. But I kind of hope I'm wrong, because it really is kind of nifty.
Sure, but Visa hasn't stopped supporting Chronopay, which is the (PayPal-esque) service you use to put money on your AoMP3 account.
I used it a few days ago, and it was really pretty painless.
Isn't this the sort of problem that might be well-addressed with genetic algorithms? We've got a problem that we can't really define well (mathematically), but we know what good results should look like. So the actualy process to solve the problem is hard to design, but a test for good results is (comparatively) easy to design.
That sounds exactly like the sort of problem that you could use GAs on.
Unless, of course, I'm completely wrong about the state of the art in genetic algorithms, or am making some other fundamental error in my reasoning.
That's why I'm going back to buying CDs now that Allofmp3.com is basically gone.
Huh?
Unless this happened late last night, I don't have any idea what you could be talking about. Just yesterday I finished buying/downloading several tracks from them*, after putting money in my account a couple days previous.
*These, notably, were songs I already owned on CD - the cost of music on AoMP3.com is such that I'd rather pay them than find the CDs I want then swap them in and out of the drive when I only want MP3 copies of a couple tracks off each. I freely admit, this may or may not be legal, but I maintain that it's perfectly ethical.
I read Jon Katz, sir, and Bennett, sir, is no Jon Katz. He didn't use the word "Hellmouth" even once!
/. - we don't see articles of any length or real analysis anymore (or at least, far, far fewer of them). Obviously, /.'s central function is the blurb/discussion news format, but I really think a guy like Jon Katz had a positive role to play, adding full, original articles to the mix.
Though, to be perfectly honest, while I might have disagreed with him some, and he may have had a tendency towards melodrama, I miss the role Jon Katz filled on
OTOH, if that's the role Bennett is shooting for, he'll need to do a lot better than this. Katz always came across as though he had really thought about what he was writing, even if I thought he was wrong. This was the same level of analysis as the front page blurbs are, but longer and less focussed.
(spelling nazis: yes, I put two 's's in focussed. Also busses and gasses. Levelled and travelled. I spell judgement with an 'e', too.)
I can't help pointing out that water does not, in fact, swirl the "wrong way" on the other side of the equator. The coriolis effect which purportedly causes this is far, far too small a force compared to any other influences (shape of the container, direction the water is sprayed into it, a butterfly in Puerto Rico) to cause this, the Simpsons notwithstanding.
Where this effect does appear is in large air masses, or perfectly still, shallow pans of water tens of meters across.
To be fair, it's not that incomplete. I felt a lot better when I finished KOTOR2 than I did when I encountered the end of (note that I don't say "finished") Halo2.
There's at least one major plotline, however, which is frustratingly incomplete.
Condescending question: do you meatbags really believe you can successfully complete a quest where the opponents are HK units?
Pfft. Mage is easy, you get magic.
Hunter is where it's at.
WotC is the Great Satan of the gaming world, and 3rd edition is for pansies.
Real hack-n-slashers play AD&D 2nd ed.
Nah. Level 0 NPCs with a class get an automatic max roll on that class' appropriate hit die. Level 0 NPCs without a class get 6 HP (default hit die is 1d6). Yes, this does mean that a non-classed NPC will have more HP than a level 0 or 1 magic user, but them's the breaks.
At least, that's how it work at my table.
Well, they did keep saying "he who controls the bankroll controls the universe."
Not the Thoth Phairy?
But if you're going to fly there and find out, you'd better hurry: the Cheops close at 5:00. And make sure you check out the camels, they're without peer amid the mammals...
OK - let's shoot for reducing acceleration from gravity from 9.8N to .98N, as you suggest.
Gravity falls off according to the inverse-square law. So, to achieve 1/10 the force of gravity, you need to get sqrt(10) times as far away from the center of gravity of the planet. So we have to get just over 3.1 times as far from the center of gravity as we currently are.
So, how far from the surface is that? Let's assume that the planet is a perfect sphere of uniform density, which will make the center of gravity (conveniently) co-located with the center of the planet. According to Google, the radius of the earth is 6,378.1 km, but we're using two sig figs for the multiplication, so we'll call it 6,300 km. Obviously, three times that is 19,000 km. Subtract the 6,300 km we're already at, and we're at 12,000 km.
Now, explaing to me again how it's so much more feasible to build a tower 12,000 km tall than it is to build the tether with a counterweight?
If you can make tether that strong and light, you can use N of them to make tower stand. Materials for such tower also can be very very light and very very hard. But probably to not such greater extent tether has to be strong.
What makes super-super-strong tether in your mind possible and super-hard and super-light tower impossible?
Well, for one thing, tensile strength and compressive strength aren't the same thing. A substance which would withstand the pulling force of a fixed space elevator (from earth's surface through GSO to a counterweight) would not necessarily be able to withstand the compressive force of supporting its own weight.
Then there's the balance issue. If you build a tether with its center of mass at GSO, it's in free orbit around the planet. This means it has zero chance of falling over, whereas a shorter tower's center of mass would need to always be over its surface footprint. The higher you make the tower, obviously, the harder this is to maintain.
If you can make tether that strong and light, you can use N of them to make tower stand. Materials for such tower also can be very very light and very very hard. But probably to not such greater extent tether has to be strong.
This is simply untrue. If I'm standing on top of a building and lower a rope to the ground, someone can climb it. This doesn't mean you can build a tower of that height out of the same material (a rope). (In this analogy, the top of the building is the counterweight on the end of the tether, which holds it taut)
But how heavy it would have to have? I shiver to even think that thing might alter (or even de-orbit) Earth. The wikipedia page doesn't answer that question.
It doesn't answer this question for the same reason it doesn't answer the question of whether the Klingons will think that the tether is a threat to them, and therefore attack the human race: it's a complete non-issue. For one thing, the earth gets heavier every day, as crap from space falls into it (from dust all the way up to visible meteors), probably more in a year than the mass of the asteroid counterweight. I'm not worried about de-orbiting the planet anytime soon, are you?
If you're really worried about it, let's make the counterweight out of material taken from the planet, thereby not changing the planet's mass at all, and therefore not affecting its orbit around the sun.
I don't think you grasp how much mass and velocity the planet has.
I realize, of course, that any answer you give to this question may not be valid a couple years down the road, but as of now:
Does the release of IE7 mark the beginning of a more aggressive development/release cycle for Internet Explorer? That is, we are all aware of various aspects of CSS, for example, that are not currently supported in IE (though kudos on all the progress in this direction you've made): can we expect updates to IE, either as service packs, point releases, or new versions, that will provide better standards support in the relatively near future? Or will we be limited to security fixes for the foreseeable future, as with IE6?
This reminds me of an anecdote I read somewhere, the details of which I mostly forget. So I wouldn't believe it, if I were you, but it's still amusing.
Dr. Smith is a medical researcher, helping run one end of a typical double-blind clinical trial of Unobtainasil, a new drug which is hoped to treat a severe condition. He's flying to Switzerland for a conference of some kind.
While in the airport, he happens to sit down next to Dr. Jones, whom he met a while back at another conference. They get to talking shop, as is not surprising - and it eventually comes out that Dr. Jones is also working on the clinical trials of Unobtainasil.
With great dismay, they realize they've just compromised the trial, and all the data will probably need to be thrown out.
Whoops.
Moral of the story: never talk about anything with anyone.
The problem with your argument is that it denies the very existence of expertise. You could apply the same argument to surgeons performing triple bypasses, and thereby "prove" that you're just as well off asking your mechanic to operate on you as you are going to Johns Hopkins.
All you've really demonstrated is that it's possible to come up with false positives when determining expertise. This is not a surprising answer.
Ok, you got me. What in the hell is "trustafarianism"?
[Nostalgic "I remember when" comment]
[Criticism of modern gaming and gamers]
[Self-deprecating witticism]
[Trite conclusion]
I should think so, yes - at an annual salary of £21,000, even before taxes, you're talking about £1,750 a month. Even at US tax rates (which I believe to be lower than UK), that becomes ~£1,300. That makes £500 more than a third of the household's monthly income!
In the US, the $580 price of the PS3 (this figure is reached by weighting the average of the high price with the low price with respect to their percentages of production) is less than 25% of my monthly income and around 10% of my household monthly income (both figures being after taxes, before living expenses) - and it's still not something I'd just go out and buy on a whim.
I have no idea what average rent/mortgage payments are in the UK, but making a completely unsubstantiated assumption that they approach that of the US (in terms of percentage of take-home pay), the PS3 is right around (possibly higher than!) a full rent payment.
I don't see how that can possibly be an impulse buy for any reasonable person.