Most consumers don't want to use C++ either, but it doesn't mean manufacturers should stop selling computers with notepad and a compiler. By all means, run your netbook on Vista if you want to, but I like mine to be fast.
Normally you'd expect further aftershocks, but mostly small ones - and given that this was a small one in itself (roughly 1/1000th of the big Japanese one) you probably won't notice them. The really big ones (think the mag 9 in Japan) can have comparably big aftershocks, but the small ones aren't too much of a worry.
The magnitude/frequency ratio with earthquakes follows a fairly well established power law. The very small ones happen daily, even hourly, but the really big ones only happen every decade or so.
Back in the day you needed a detailed knowledge of TCP/IP before you could connect to a computer. In the early 90s a working knowledge of HTML and JavaScript could get you a good IT job. These days people are employed to type stuff into Twitter. In the future we'll see people with very low levels of technical knowledge working in internal "IT" jobs who mostly just update text and liaise with centralised infrastructure organisations. Small and medium companies, and maybe even larger ones, will not maintain on-site servers because hiring data-centre based hardware complete with on-site "real IT" guys will be much more cost efficient.
This entire thing could, of course, be planned from the start. Tablets are handy, but way overpriced for what they are. $100, or £100 as it will end up on this side of the pond? That's not bad actually, I'd buy one for that, simply for the form factor. Of course they can't just offer a cheap tablet, because everyone will presume it's crap, so they cut it early, save a bunch on advertising, and sell them by the bucketload when demand shoots up because everybody thinks they're getting a bargain. This all presumes they sell enough to allow such a low price of course.
Blackwell's in the UK are already on it. They've got an instore POD machine which prints any paperback they've got the file for, including Gutenberg stuff, in seven minutes or so, for the standard price of a paperback the same size. The thing they didn't expect, but which has been very popular, is the number of people self-publishing on it. For under £100 you can plug in a USB stick and get ten proper paperback copies of your own book, however good or bad. Colour cover and everything.
BT, the main ISP in the UK, recently opened everyone's home wireless routers up to allow any BT customer free access to any other BT router. When I queried this I was told we'd "been opted in" to the scheme, but could opt out if we wanted to. So for BT at least, "opt-in" means anyone who hasn't specifically opted out, and you aren't allowed to opt out until you've already been opted in.
The UK courts are working round the clock at the moment, and most of the defendants are pleading guilty as there's CCTV, police, media and/or civilian-shot footage, or in this case, an internet record of the crimes. That said, IANAL but I believe you can't base a sentence on deterrent value in the UK.
So large, naturally occurring sheets of graphene will naturally curl up into tubes? What are the odds of them being contaminated with H, O, N and P, "just so"? Pretty high given the numbers?
That's actually rather interesting. I'm guessing the suggestion is that large, naturally occurring (and hence probably quite heavily contaminated, atom wise) could serve as a basis for DNA bases and similar molecules. What happens when you dunk billions upon billions of them in warm water? Who knows. But it could be a mechanism for abiogenesis. Inpure graphene -> amino acid base pairs -> DNA -> Badgers. Finding graphene in other galaxies could actually turn out to be big news in the long run.
Sit in a car with a good driver (think advanced training like IAM or police Roadcraft) and have a conversation. You'll find they regularly zone out of the conversation, much like a pilot when they're dealing with flying the plane and talking to ATC. A good driver knows when their attention is becoming comprimised and zones out of the conversation or slows down/stops to compensate. A driver who is talking on a mobile is clearly not able to do this. Hands-free kits are a middle ground - a good driver will be able to use one in the same way a good driver can hold a conversation with a passenger. A bad driver uses one to avoid conviction, and is just as dangerous as a bad driver holding a conversation with a passenger, which is not illegal but is bad practice.
Yes, exactly, but without the luxury of squishy humans on board to steer. If you want to fly it from the ground you've got signal lag and the minor problem of that plasma shroud. I would imagine it's autonomous in most ways, in some ways it is a bigger challenge than Shuttle.
If you want the Gmail experience without relying on Google's servers then get yourself some hosting (personally I use United Hosting) and point the mailserver at a gmail account. Everything is run from your server, so you can use squirrel or whatever to run it entirely free of Google as and when you wish, but you can still use the Gmail interface if it suits you. You're basically using Google's interfave as a proxy while leaving yourself with a working system if Google goes down 100%, forever. The alternative is to code your own Gmail variant into the server, but remember Gmail is good in part because of a ridiculous number of man-hours.
Unless the summary is talking about the journal instead of the arXiv article it's not paywalled, I don't think I've ever seen anything on arXiv that is. It's kind of the point. Anyway, if you can't be bothered looking for the PDF link (top right) this will take you straight to the paper.
Yup. I've never used Facebook and never will, but I do use a lot of Google services, and I generally like the way Google do things, so I was very interested in having a play with G+. It's kind of useful, but certainly not worth giving up my (admittedly very superficial) pseudonymity for. If you really want to know who I am it's easy enough, the link in my sig is my blog, and there's easily enough there to work out who I am in the real world, but if you type my real name into Google it's not all that easy to find me. All I want is to stop the neds from school 20 years ago from finding me, I just want to be invisible to the people who don't have the time, brains or inclination to find me.
So I deleted my G+ account yesterday, including a very polite and hopefully listened-to message to Google saying much of the above. Hopefully they'll listen, they're one of the few big companies I have time for, and I really don't want to live in a world where there isn't at least one large corporation I have a bit of respect for.
We're down to the theory of indiscernables now, which is pure philosophy, and multiverse theory is close to that at the best of times! Can two identical things be different?
I'd argue that the types 1, 2 and 4 are different. Even if there's a whole different and identical Milky Way somewhere, the matter distribution between here and there is asymmetric (and the asymmetry grows with distance), so you can easily define that version x of me is somewhere in relation to version y of me. So they can be shown to be different.
Even if the whole surrounding Hubble volume was identical to ours, the two versions of "me" can be differentiated through reference to fluctuations in their respective cosmic microwave backgrounds. That's exactly what this experiment is doing, except they're not looking for signs of an identical me, they're just looking for "anything".
Type 3, the Many Worlds approach (and Hugh Everett III gets some belated respect for that idea) is different. The two universes overlap until a crucial point where a single quantum level interaction causes them to split end evolve differently. So there are other versions of me, but we all share the same, identical past me. A huge number in fact, with my universe splitting every time a quantum level event occurs. Well, any quantum level event which can affect me, which given relativity is pretty much every event in the observable universe. Or multiverse. I haven't decided which yet. There's a good book on it, Universe Or Multiverse, Carr. My review here.
There are two options I can see from your suggestion:
1: Type 1, 2 and 4 versions of me are completely different to "me" in that they're made of different matter and don't interact with the "real" me sitting here. They're only superficially similar to me because statistically there's bound to be repetition in a near-infinite or infinite multiverse.
2: Type 3, the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum theory, is different. The various versions of "me" have overlapped in the past. The "me" that wrote this and the "me" that didn't were the same thing up until point x, when a particle decohered and set of a cascade of events resulting in two different universes. The version of me not writing this remembers my dinner last night not because it just happened to have the same thing, but because it was the same dinner. Roast chicken stuffed with haggis, since you ask.
Interesting question. There are several different kinds of possible multiverse (see Tegmark). What this is looking for is type one, possibly type two. They're the most "boring" in some ways because the "other versions" of you exist simply because of statistical imperative and are also a very, very long way away. It's like proving two identical snowflakes have existed, but not knowing where or when. Still, I love the fact that people are trying to test ideas that were thought to be untestable at one point.
I stand corrected. Is there a legal definition of a difference between the 1s and 0s that make a DVD software and the 1s and 0s that make a DVD a "video"? What about a music CD with "bonus" material like pictures and a tour diary?
On top of that, backing up media rather than time-shifting is even greyer. I can't cite a case for you, but I'm sure I've heard that making a single backup for your own use is legal due to precedent - so you can make a single copy of your Windows installation CD or favourite episode of Red Dwarf for your own use if, and only if, the original fails.
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Most consumers don't want to use C++ either, but it doesn't mean manufacturers should stop selling computers with notepad and a compiler. By all means, run your netbook on Vista if you want to, but I like mine to be fast.
Or just stick linux on it. I use a little Asus with 1Gb Ram and it flies along, does everything you'd expect from a £200 and a fair bit more.
Normally you'd expect further aftershocks, but mostly small ones - and given that this was a small one in itself (roughly 1/1000th of the big Japanese one) you probably won't notice them. The really big ones (think the mag 9 in Japan) can have comparably big aftershocks, but the small ones aren't too much of a worry.
The magnitude/frequency ratio with earthquakes follows a fairly well established power law. The very small ones happen daily, even hourly, but the really big ones only happen every decade or so.
Back in the day you needed a detailed knowledge of TCP/IP before you could connect to a computer. In the early 90s a working knowledge of HTML and JavaScript could get you a good IT job. These days people are employed to type stuff into Twitter. In the future we'll see people with very low levels of technical knowledge working in internal "IT" jobs who mostly just update text and liaise with centralised infrastructure organisations. Small and medium companies, and maybe even larger ones, will not maintain on-site servers because hiring data-centre based hardware complete with on-site "real IT" guys will be much more cost efficient.
This entire thing could, of course, be planned from the start. Tablets are handy, but way overpriced for what they are. $100, or £100 as it will end up on this side of the pond? That's not bad actually, I'd buy one for that, simply for the form factor. Of course they can't just offer a cheap tablet, because everyone will presume it's crap, so they cut it early, save a bunch on advertising, and sell them by the bucketload when demand shoots up because everybody thinks they're getting a bargain. This all presumes they sell enough to allow such a low price of course.
Blackwell's in the UK are already on it. They've got an instore POD machine which prints any paperback they've got the file for, including Gutenberg stuff, in seven minutes or so, for the standard price of a paperback the same size. The thing they didn't expect, but which has been very popular, is the number of people self-publishing on it. For under £100 you can plug in a USB stick and get ten proper paperback copies of your own book, however good or bad. Colour cover and everything.
Yeah, opt-in....
BT, the main ISP in the UK, recently opened everyone's home wireless routers up to allow any BT customer free access to any other BT router. When I queried this I was told we'd "been opted in" to the scheme, but could opt out if we wanted to. So for BT at least, "opt-in" means anyone who hasn't specifically opted out, and you aren't allowed to opt out until you've already been opted in.
The UK courts are working round the clock at the moment, and most of the defendants are pleading guilty as there's CCTV, police, media and/or civilian-shot footage, or in this case, an internet record of the crimes. That said, IANAL but I believe you can't base a sentence on deterrent value in the UK.
So large, naturally occurring sheets of graphene will naturally curl up into tubes? What are the odds of them being contaminated with H, O, N and P, "just so"? Pretty high given the numbers?
Duh, "large graphene sheets could serve as a basis for DNA...". Sorry.
That's actually rather interesting. I'm guessing the suggestion is that large, naturally occurring (and hence probably quite heavily contaminated, atom wise) could serve as a basis for DNA bases and similar molecules. What happens when you dunk billions upon billions of them in warm water? Who knows. But it could be a mechanism for abiogenesis. Inpure graphene -> amino acid base pairs -> DNA -> Badgers. Finding graphene in other galaxies could actually turn out to be big news in the long run.
Sit in a car with a good driver (think advanced training like IAM or police Roadcraft) and have a conversation. You'll find they regularly zone out of the conversation, much like a pilot when they're dealing with flying the plane and talking to ATC. A good driver knows when their attention is becoming comprimised and zones out of the conversation or slows down/stops to compensate. A driver who is talking on a mobile is clearly not able to do this. Hands-free kits are a middle ground - a good driver will be able to use one in the same way a good driver can hold a conversation with a passenger. A bad driver uses one to avoid conviction, and is just as dangerous as a bad driver holding a conversation with a passenger, which is not illegal but is bad practice.
No we didn't. Shush.
Yes, exactly, but without the luxury of squishy humans on board to steer. If you want to fly it from the ground you've got signal lag and the minor problem of that plasma shroud. I would imagine it's autonomous in most ways, in some ways it is a bigger challenge than Shuttle.
If you want the Gmail experience without relying on Google's servers then get yourself some hosting (personally I use United Hosting) and point the mailserver at a gmail account. Everything is run from your server, so you can use squirrel or whatever to run it entirely free of Google as and when you wish, but you can still use the Gmail interface if it suits you. You're basically using Google's interfave as a proxy while leaving yourself with a working system if Google goes down 100%, forever. The alternative is to code your own Gmail variant into the server, but remember Gmail is good in part because of a ridiculous number of man-hours.
Unless the summary is talking about the journal instead of the arXiv article it's not paywalled, I don't think I've ever seen anything on arXiv that is. It's kind of the point. Anyway, if you can't be bothered looking for the PDF link (top right) this will take you straight to the paper.
Yup. I've never used Facebook and never will, but I do use a lot of Google services, and I generally like the way Google do things, so I was very interested in having a play with G+. It's kind of useful, but certainly not worth giving up my (admittedly very superficial) pseudonymity for. If you really want to know who I am it's easy enough, the link in my sig is my blog, and there's easily enough there to work out who I am in the real world, but if you type my real name into Google it's not all that easy to find me. All I want is to stop the neds from school 20 years ago from finding me, I just want to be invisible to the people who don't have the time, brains or inclination to find me.
So I deleted my G+ account yesterday, including a very polite and hopefully listened-to message to Google saying much of the above. Hopefully they'll listen, they're one of the few big companies I have time for, and I really don't want to live in a world where there isn't at least one large corporation I have a bit of respect for.
And yet they find the sale of highly artificial and homogenised H. sap mating scenarios perfectly normal. Weird.
We're down to the theory of indiscernables now, which is pure philosophy, and multiverse theory is close to that at the best of times! Can two identical things be different?
I'd argue that the types 1, 2 and 4 are different. Even if there's a whole different and identical Milky Way somewhere, the matter distribution between here and there is asymmetric (and the asymmetry grows with distance), so you can easily define that version x of me is somewhere in relation to version y of me. So they can be shown to be different.
Even if the whole surrounding Hubble volume was identical to ours, the two versions of "me" can be differentiated through reference to fluctuations in their respective cosmic microwave backgrounds. That's exactly what this experiment is doing, except they're not looking for signs of an identical me, they're just looking for "anything".
Type 3, the Many Worlds approach (and Hugh Everett III gets some belated respect for that idea) is different. The two universes overlap until a crucial point where a single quantum level interaction causes them to split end evolve differently. So there are other versions of me, but we all share the same, identical past me. A huge number in fact, with my universe splitting every time a quantum level event occurs. Well, any quantum level event which can affect me, which given relativity is pretty much every event in the observable universe. Or multiverse. I haven't decided which yet. There's a good book on it, Universe Or Multiverse, Carr. My review here.
There are two options I can see from your suggestion:
1: Type 1, 2 and 4 versions of me are completely different to "me" in that they're made of different matter and don't interact with the "real" me sitting here. They're only superficially similar to me because statistically there's bound to be repetition in a near-infinite or infinite multiverse.
2: Type 3, the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum theory, is different. The various versions of "me" have overlapped in the past. The "me" that wrote this and the "me" that didn't were the same thing up until point x, when a particle decohered and set of a cascade of events resulting in two different universes. The version of me not writing this remembers my dinner last night not because it just happened to have the same thing, but because it was the same dinner. Roast chicken stuffed with haggis, since you ask.
Interesting question. There are several different kinds of possible multiverse (see Tegmark). What this is looking for is type one, possibly type two. They're the most "boring" in some ways because the "other versions" of you exist simply because of statistical imperative and are also a very, very long way away. It's like proving two identical snowflakes have existed, but not knowing where or when. Still, I love the fact that people are trying to test ideas that were thought to be untestable at one point.
I stand corrected. Is there a legal definition of a difference between the 1s and 0s that make a DVD software and the 1s and 0s that make a DVD a "video"? What about a music CD with "bonus" material like pictures and a tour diary?
On top of that, backing up media rather than time-shifting is even greyer. I can't cite a case for you, but I'm sure I've heard that making a single backup for your own use is legal due to precedent - so you can make a single copy of your Windows installation CD or favourite episode of Red Dwarf for your own use if, and only if, the original fails.
You get a "conflict" - the original and both new versions are kept and you can keep any or all of them.
He profited from what I heard ;)