Pretty sure we don't get a star. I'm not a US-political-system buff but don't the stars represent states which have some kind of representation in the US federal government? If so we obviously don't have any such say so we'll just get pencilled up somewhere in the paperwork as a lackey state.:/
Ooh, I have a character on Dunemaul! *logs onto phat cow druid and asks peterjenning who he was camping* >;)
As for TFA, I've noticed that (in WoW, for example) people try not to stand in the middle of other people when in crowded areas such as auction houses and mailboxes.
I've often wondered about this. It's an incontrovertible fact that adult/child sexual contact almost always causes psychological damage to the child, but is that due entirely to the act itself or is it due to the massive social stigma attached, which in itself can cause damage and which will make the adult feel guilt which is then passed on to the child?
I know that when I were a lad, I certainly wouldn't have objected if one of our (exceedingly hot) TAs had been up for a little mutual molestation. And in a recent case here in Australia, we have an attractive 30-yo woman being sentenced for consensual sex with a 15-year-old boy. To be honest, I can't see how it was wrong as long as they were responsible about it.
Nope, we'll call it a drawing of a cube when defining it... but if someone asks "what is it?" we're liable to just say "it's a 3D cube". That's a common way to use the English language, and for most of us is not hard to understand. The ability to understand flexibly used language is one of the things that differentiates us humans from machines.
Lots of 2D representations of 3D things are referred to as '3D' - take, for example, any game with '3D rendered graphics', ie. almost all of them these days. Common usage is, like it or not, the most reliable way to transfer information.
To bastardize a perfectly good term, 'hard AI' is the "Intelligence of the Gaps". It's the 'hard stuff' we need to figure out in order to boil currently human-requiring tasks down into programmatic algorithms. The chess argument is actually true - you *can* apply a search-based AI to the universe, if you're a theoretical computer scientist with an infinite Turing machine. Of course, we don't, which is where things get interesting.
The problem, as you say, is that as soon as we can code an algorithm to solve a task, that task is no longer considered to require intelligence. I blame the fact that we don't actually know wtf 'intelligence' is. All attempts to define it that I've seen are circular. Eventually, I don't doubt we'll have algorithms to solve any task a human could reasonably be expected to solve (so I guess I'm a strong AI proponent); will we then be forced to define ourselves as unintelligent? Or will we be forced to conclude that our code is intelligent? Most likely, it seems to me, is that we'll simply end up defining intelligence as "what humans do to solve problems". Kind of like what we had to do with swimming when submarines were invented.
Nope. He's merely proposing to use HIS time where it will do the most good. Small (relatively) amount of effort to implement Silverlight on Mono, leading to a large benefit; Linux browsers still being able to view web pages.
There's nothing stopping you from starting your own project to build a Linux-based Silverlight authoring tool.
Invent something better and open source it rather than play catch up and gamble on the evil empire playing nice. The problem is, the Open Source community is TOO good at this. Standards are only useful when there are few of them and they are widespread. Instead of inventing one much-better thing, you'll invent twenty slightly-better things. And then spend the next 200 years fighting over which is better, or trying to compromise by creating YET ANOTHER 'standard' better thing.
Despite the fearmongering here, there's one thing that big players do better than anyone else, and that's create widespread, well-adopted standards. Look at Flash - what's the open source equivalent? Some proprietary Mozilla standard? Some unique syntax for Konqueror? Java? (a fairly widespread standard, but not as widespread as for example Flash... pushed by a fairly big company, but not as big as Adobe. Coincidence?) That's why all the best, most well-known open source software is ripoffs of commercial software: The standard is already in place, all that's needed is an implementation.
Silverlight looks like it's shaping up to be pretty good, mainly because if it has MS's weight behind it and is built into Windows, it'll rapidly become ubiquitous. That, in and of itself, makes it a platform worth targeting. Once it has a few 'killer apps' (think what YouTube was for Flash, and the outcry when it didn't work on Linux) then you'll be wishing there was a Linux player, because otherwise your high and mighty idealism would be costing you something personal.
Sorry, this came across as sounding rather harsh, but what you said hit a nerve - I've always seen the ignore-big-standards-and-create-something-obscure syndrome as the core problem with open source. It's more aimed at the average slashdotter than the parent.
Maybe he already had shelter (a bridge, perchance?) but was too cold to enjoy it, and some food (which was cold and unappetizing due to being uncooked). At that point, he did the obvious thing and burned a spare mattress for warmth...? >.>
Sadly, teachers don't seem to be rewarded on any kind of performance basis. From what I've heard (my dad's a teacher, and has taught both primary and high school in the last 15 or so years) 90% of your career advancement as a teacher is achieved through politics, backstabbery, principal's-ass-kissery, and/or going to the right church (in the Catholic system). Whether the kids learn anything is incidendal, and mostly based on the individual teacher's motivation.
I agree that things would be much, much better the way you describe them.
Integral fast reactors consume any transuranic element.
From Wikipedia:
Compared to current light-water reactors with a once-through fuel cycle that uses less than 1% of the energy in the uranium, the IFR has a very efficient (99.5% usage) fuel cycle. The basic scheme used electrolytic separation to remove transuranics and actinides from the wastes and concentrate them. These concentrated fuels were then reformed, on site, into new fuel elements. Non-trans-uranic (sub-uranic? pre-uranic?) waste products are a short term storage proposal only.
Another important benefit of removing the long half-life transuranics from the waste cycle is that the remaining waste becomes a much shorter-term hazard. After the actinides and transuranics are removed from the spent fuel, the remaining waste elements have half lives of a few decades at most. The result is that within 300 years, such wastes are no more radioactive than the ores of natural radioactive elements. In laymans' terms, it can't explode (no high-pressure radioactive coolant), it can't melt down (passive self-limiting design), it doesn't produce long-lived radioactives (any that it does produce it re-burns into short-lived waste). Nuclear looks pretty ideal short-term to me, and with this type of reactor it's good for mid- to long-term too. Solar will be good once solar cells can actually pay for the costs of their own manufacture in less than 20 years.
Besides, ANY mind altering act (be it sex, drugs, alchohol, anything) done to get away from emotional pain will always get worse. Doing it for fun or socially is fine - just like drinking alchohol, its ok in moderation. Very, very true, and so easy to forget. If I had mod points they'd be there instead of this post. Problems always get bigger the harder you try to run away from them.
I'm curious how (sustainable) biofuel isn't environmentally friendly? It's carbon neutral, leverages our existing overproduction of food crops, seems all good all round. The only thing I can think of is that it's smelly and bad for your valve seats... obviously logging old growth forest for biomass doesn't count here, just things like maize and grain crops.
Hydro plants are protested against because they flood large areas of wildlife habitats and peoples' homes. That's an 'environmental' issue but not an emissions one.
I agree, though, that jumping on the 'alternative' bandwagon is far too fashionable and often counterconstructive - take, for example, the fact that the Prius uses more fuel than the Golf TDi[1]. Like any other engineering issue (and conservation is one at heart) you have to look at the data and not just follow the emotive hype. For instance, modern nuclear reactor designs are far safer than the old, cold-war era designs, and potentially very fuel efficient. If it weren't for the "nuclear is bad" mindset of the general public, they would be the perfect mid- to long-term energy solution.
[1] Of course, that's not a fair comparison because the TDi runs diesel fuel which has a higher energy density, but I'm pretty sure the total energy cost of a Prius over its lifetime is higher than that of a TDi.
Re:This is actually my HOPE for the future
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Censoring a Number
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Marathon? You mean the classic FPS by Bungie, right?
Congratulations, you have just demonstrated the power of selective quotation. Hurrah.
Maybe you program purely for fun. I don't know. In such a case, you may have nothing better to do than learn new languages and tools. If you have any actual requirement to produce working, usable, robust code within a given deadline, however, generally the last thing you need to do is start over with a new development environment.
If you have six hours to cut down a tree, your best bet is to use the sharp axe that you already own and get to work straight away. In the rare case that no axes that you own are suited to your current tree, it may be worth obtaining a new one and sharpening it, but always remember that the more axes you own, the blunter, on average, they will be. In our trade, axes get sharper with use, not blunter. (With apologies to Abraham Lincoln.:P )
Anybody who's ever felt the car speed up when a tail-gater leaves your slipstream to overtake is familiar with the effect. Actually, that's because the ass in the driver's seat speeds up the moment he thinks he's going to be overtaken due to some misplaced competitive streak. I can't find a reference, but I'm reasonably sure (based on my own cycling experience) the drafting vehicle actually reduces drag slightly on the front-runner, although nowhere near as much as it has its own drag reduced.
The question is how much of the energy siphoned off by the turbines would otherwise remain in the car+road+air system as tailwind. If not much, then the system will probably be worth it overall. If much of the energy would remain as tailwind then it's likely to be a loss overall, although as has been pointed out, it's a financial win for the local government at the expense of very slightly higher fuel consumption for every vehicle traveling past the turbines.
It depends a lot on what adapter you use. I too used FTDI-based USB-to-RS232 adapters at my last job and some of them (can't remember brands, sorry, it was a while back) used to wedge themselves after a couple of hours continuous use. Fine for copying stuff off a device but not good for automation. Then again, we did find one brand that was solid even after a weekend of hammering data back and forth. The FTDI chips seem solid, I'd tend towards blaming the low-budget boards they get used in.
Are we going to start seeing our paychecks docked because our computer was left on during lunch or because we left the light on after we went home for the night? I can't imagine a company valuing half a KWh over the 15 minutes it takes an employee to boot their computer and then go through the ritual of loading all their apps, checking mail, reading the news etc. Employee time is *expensive*, especially if you work in a high-rise (I did a brief stint in one, and was told that the company was paying around $50/hour just in rent per employee, before any wages or anything. That's where all those investment bank fees go to, apparently...)
There's a lot to suggest that the Worlds of Warcraft and Starcraft are not discrete universes... True. Specific examples off the top of my head:
* Felhounds look very similar to zerglings.
* Silithids / Qiraji have the same overlord / bug worker system going.
* Draeni = Protoss. Don't deny it.
(Draeni speak with Russian accents, so may have descended from protoss who spent a lot of time with United Earth Protectorate fleet commanders, who also have Russian accents. OK, ok, now I'm stretching it...:P )
It may be they cost too damned much for you, ever heard the expression 'buy cheap buy twice' ? And an excellent expression for the computer industry it is, too! You will always end up with a better system in the end by buying a midrange PC and then buying another midrange PC in 18-24 months, compared to buying a top of the range system and keeping it.
I had exactly this debate with a (non-computer-literate) friend of mine. He'd decided he was sick of upgrading his computer so often (every two years or so), so he was going to lay down the cash for a top end Apple G5 desktop. He basically put all the options on the web site up to 11, and ended up with a total cost of around AU$6500. We (an Apple-fanboi friend of mine, and I) managed to talk him into at least dropping down to second-best CPU and hard drive, and using the difference to upgrade the monitor to a nice one. Sadly, though, it was impossible to get through to him the fact that in two years' time, $3000 will buy a helluva lot better computer than $6000 will now.
Computers aren't like houses or furniture, twice as expensive is only half again as good, and they depreciate like mad things. Buy cheap, buy often, is the way to win. And as for the GP's post, it WAS too damn expensive, for him. I didn't see him claiming it was too expensive for everyone.
Exception: Don't be afraid to splurge on interface devices. Get a bigass monitor, nice keyboard/mouse, and some sweet speakers. These things don't depreciate as much and you keep them when you upgrade the box.
The Karma system isn't broken, it simply implements mob rule in a fairly direct manner. In fact, I'd argue that it's less broken than, say, democracy or (to stay on topic) intellectual property laws.
I think what you meant to say is 'people are broken'. Which as a general statement seems to be true.
Slashdot Mirror
Pretty sure we don't get a star. I'm not a US-political-system buff but don't the stars represent states which have some kind of representation in the US federal government? If so we obviously don't have any such say so we'll just get pencilled up somewhere in the paperwork as a lackey state. :/
Ooh, I have a character on Dunemaul! *logs onto phat cow druid and asks peterjenning who he was camping* >;)
As for TFA, I've noticed that (in WoW, for example) people try not to stand in the middle of other people when in crowded areas such as auction houses and mailboxes.
I've often wondered about this. It's an incontrovertible fact that adult/child sexual contact almost always causes psychological damage to the child, but is that due entirely to the act itself or is it due to the massive social stigma attached, which in itself can cause damage and which will make the adult feel guilt which is then passed on to the child?
I know that when I were a lad, I certainly wouldn't have objected if one of our (exceedingly hot) TAs had been up for a little mutual molestation. And in a recent case here in Australia, we have an attractive 30-yo woman being sentenced for consensual sex with a 15-year-old boy. To be honest, I can't see how it was wrong as long as they were responsible about it.
Nope, we'll call it a drawing of a cube when defining it... but if someone asks "what is it?" we're liable to just say "it's a 3D cube". That's a common way to use the English language, and for most of us is not hard to understand. The ability to understand flexibly used language is one of the things that differentiates us humans from machines.
Lots of 2D representations of 3D things are referred to as '3D' - take, for example, any game with '3D rendered graphics', ie. almost all of them these days. Common usage is, like it or not, the most reliable way to transfer information.
To bastardize a perfectly good term, 'hard AI' is the "Intelligence of the Gaps". It's the 'hard stuff' we need to figure out in order to boil currently human-requiring tasks down into programmatic algorithms. The chess argument is actually true - you *can* apply a search-based AI to the universe, if you're a theoretical computer scientist with an infinite Turing machine. Of course, we don't, which is where things get interesting.
The problem, as you say, is that as soon as we can code an algorithm to solve a task, that task is no longer considered to require intelligence. I blame the fact that we don't actually know wtf 'intelligence' is. All attempts to define it that I've seen are circular. Eventually, I don't doubt we'll have algorithms to solve any task a human could reasonably be expected to solve (so I guess I'm a strong AI proponent); will we then be forced to define ourselves as unintelligent? Or will we be forced to conclude that our code is intelligent? Most likely, it seems to me, is that we'll simply end up defining intelligence as "what humans do to solve problems". Kind of like what we had to do with swimming when submarines were invented.
Nope. He's merely proposing to use HIS time where it will do the most good. Small (relatively) amount of effort to implement Silverlight on Mono, leading to a large benefit; Linux browsers still being able to view web pages.
There's nothing stopping you from starting your own project to build a Linux-based Silverlight authoring tool.
Despite the fearmongering here, there's one thing that big players do better than anyone else, and that's create widespread, well-adopted standards. Look at Flash - what's the open source equivalent? Some proprietary Mozilla standard? Some unique syntax for Konqueror? Java? (a fairly widespread standard, but not as widespread as for example Flash... pushed by a fairly big company, but not as big as Adobe. Coincidence?) That's why all the best, most well-known open source software is ripoffs of commercial software: The standard is already in place, all that's needed is an implementation.
Silverlight looks like it's shaping up to be pretty good, mainly because if it has MS's weight behind it and is built into Windows, it'll rapidly become ubiquitous. That, in and of itself, makes it a platform worth targeting. Once it has a few 'killer apps' (think what YouTube was for Flash, and the outcry when it didn't work on Linux) then you'll be wishing there was a Linux player, because otherwise your high and mighty idealism would be costing you something personal.
Sorry, this came across as sounding rather harsh, but what you said hit a nerve - I've always seen the ignore-big-standards-and-create-something-obscure syndrome as the core problem with open source. It's more aimed at the average slashdotter than the parent.
Maybe he already had shelter (a bridge, perchance?) but was too cold to enjoy it, and some food (which was cold and unappetizing due to being uncooked). At that point, he did the obvious thing and burned a spare mattress for warmth...? >.>
Sadly, teachers don't seem to be rewarded on any kind of performance basis. From what I've heard (my dad's a teacher, and has taught both primary and high school in the last 15 or so years) 90% of your career advancement as a teacher is achieved through politics, backstabbery, principal's-ass-kissery, and/or going to the right church (in the Catholic system). Whether the kids learn anything is incidendal, and mostly based on the individual teacher's motivation.
I agree that things would be much, much better the way you describe them.
Stay the f**k away from the quantum whelps cave!
From Wikipedia: Compared to current light-water reactors with a once-through fuel cycle that uses less than 1% of the energy in the uranium, the IFR has a very efficient (99.5% usage) fuel cycle. The basic scheme used electrolytic separation to remove transuranics and actinides from the wastes and concentrate them. These concentrated fuels were then reformed, on site, into new fuel elements. Non-trans-uranic (sub-uranic? pre-uranic?) waste products are a short term storage proposal only. Another important benefit of removing the long half-life transuranics from the waste cycle is that the remaining waste becomes a much shorter-term hazard. After the actinides and transuranics are removed from the spent fuel, the remaining waste elements have half lives of a few decades at most. The result is that within 300 years, such wastes are no more radioactive than the ores of natural radioactive elements. In laymans' terms, it can't explode (no high-pressure radioactive coolant), it can't melt down (passive self-limiting design), it doesn't produce long-lived radioactives (any that it does produce it re-burns into short-lived waste). Nuclear looks pretty ideal short-term to me, and with this type of reactor it's good for mid- to long-term too. Solar will be good once solar cells can actually pay for the costs of their own manufacture in less than 20 years.
I'm curious how (sustainable) biofuel isn't environmentally friendly? It's carbon neutral, leverages our existing overproduction of food crops, seems all good all round. The only thing I can think of is that it's smelly and bad for your valve seats... obviously logging old growth forest for biomass doesn't count here, just things like maize and grain crops.
Hydro plants are protested against because they flood large areas of wildlife habitats and peoples' homes. That's an 'environmental' issue but not an emissions one.
I agree, though, that jumping on the 'alternative' bandwagon is far too fashionable and often counterconstructive - take, for example, the fact that the Prius uses more fuel than the Golf TDi[1]. Like any other engineering issue (and conservation is one at heart) you have to look at the data and not just follow the emotive hype. For instance, modern nuclear reactor designs are far safer than the old, cold-war era designs, and potentially very fuel efficient. If it weren't for the "nuclear is bad" mindset of the general public, they would be the perfect mid- to long-term energy solution.
[1] Of course, that's not a fair comparison because the TDi runs diesel fuel which has a higher energy density, but I'm pretty sure the total energy cost of a Prius over its lifetime is higher than that of a TDi.
Marathon? You mean the classic FPS by Bungie, right?
Congratulations, you have just demonstrated the power of selective quotation. Hurrah.
:P )
Maybe you program purely for fun. I don't know. In such a case, you may have nothing better to do than learn new languages and tools. If you have any actual requirement to produce working, usable, robust code within a given deadline, however, generally the last thing you need to do is start over with a new development environment.
If you have six hours to cut down a tree, your best bet is to use the sharp axe that you already own and get to work straight away. In the rare case that no axes that you own are suited to your current tree, it may be worth obtaining a new one and sharpening it, but always remember that the more axes you own, the blunter, on average, they will be. In our trade, axes get sharper with use, not blunter. (With apologies to Abraham Lincoln.
The question is how much of the energy siphoned off by the turbines would otherwise remain in the car+road+air system as tailwind. If not much, then the system will probably be worth it overall. If much of the energy would remain as tailwind then it's likely to be a loss overall, although as has been pointed out, it's a financial win for the local government at the expense of very slightly higher fuel consumption for every vehicle traveling past the turbines.
It depends a lot on what adapter you use. I too used FTDI-based USB-to-RS232 adapters at my last job and some of them (can't remember brands, sorry, it was a while back) used to wedge themselves after a couple of hours continuous use. Fine for copying stuff off a device but not good for automation. Then again, we did find one brand that was solid even after a weekend of hammering data back and forth. The FTDI chips seem solid, I'd tend towards blaming the low-budget boards they get used in.
you insensitive clod. :P
;)
Not again.
Not after last time.
<.<
>.>
* Felhounds look very similar to zerglings.
* Silithids / Qiraji have the same overlord / bug worker system going.
* Draeni = Protoss. Don't deny it.
(Draeni speak with Russian accents, so may have descended from protoss who spent a lot of time with United Earth Protectorate fleet commanders, who also have Russian accents. OK, ok, now I'm stretching it... :P )
I had exactly this debate with a (non-computer-literate) friend of mine. He'd decided he was sick of upgrading his computer so often (every two years or so), so he was going to lay down the cash for a top end Apple G5 desktop. He basically put all the options on the web site up to 11, and ended up with a total cost of around AU$6500. We (an Apple-fanboi friend of mine, and I) managed to talk him into at least dropping down to second-best CPU and hard drive, and using the difference to upgrade the monitor to a nice one. Sadly, though, it was impossible to get through to him the fact that in two years' time, $3000 will buy a helluva lot better computer than $6000 will now.
Computers aren't like houses or furniture, twice as expensive is only half again as good, and they depreciate like mad things. Buy cheap, buy often, is the way to win. And as for the GP's post, it WAS too damn expensive, for him. I didn't see him claiming it was too expensive for everyone.
Exception: Don't be afraid to splurge on interface devices. Get a bigass monitor, nice keyboard/mouse, and some sweet speakers. These things don't depreciate as much and you keep them when you upgrade the box.
The Karma system isn't broken, it simply implements mob rule in a fairly direct manner. In fact, I'd argue that it's less broken than, say, democracy or (to stay on topic) intellectual property laws.
I think what you meant to say is 'people are broken'. Which as a general statement seems to be true.