But four-legged travel has been optimized by nature (and slightly reoptimized by human breeding to carry burdens). You won't beat it with any foreseeable technology, and you won't make the unforeseeable come any faster with research in this area.
1. What robotics do, is to mimic the already optimized stuff. And perhaps even optimize it further. 2. Robotics don't have to, unless they want to, use biologically grown materials. That is a huge upside and makes for great freedom in designing.. 3. Negotiating terrain and walking are a fairly isolated problems. For example Big Dog has really shown that this problem is solved. As with all other software it will get much much better at it. As with all other hardware it will get exponentially more brainpower to help out.
So I disagree, for this specific case, and in eight years, a robot will be better than a mule. The only problem is that of energy. Maybe it could have unfoldable solar panels to use in an emergency, to slowly make it's way home if running out of it.
The private industry is decades away from what NASA can do today.
Actually, it is the private industry that does what NASA do for NASA. Rocketdyne, Boeing, Lockheed et al ARE private companies. The private industry can already do what NASA can, and probably more, given a budget. NASA is mostly there to manage the projects. So it not decades away, it is billions of dollars away.
The only reason companies like Virgin Galactic don't do what NASA do is the fact that their customers aren't willing to pay billions. It is probably just as hard, if not harder, to get people into LEO on a small budget, than it is to get them to Mars on a huge one. Personally, I am far more impressed by SpaceShipTwo and its carrier(which is really cool) than I am of most of the (new) things the constellations program was supposed to create.
If I were running that sort of network, that's what I would use to partition off the real money from the record keeping.
Except that in the majority of these systems, the records ARE the real money. The banking system(and the economy in general) works through a complex debt management system. There is not much actual money or assets there, or at least not more than needed to comply with local legislation.
The cap also served as the top to a Thermos-like bottle that chilled the instrument. WISE's infrared telescope and detectors are kept chilled inside a Thermos-like tank of solid hydrogen, called a cryostat.
The returned images will once and for all prove that stars really are huge Thermoses?
Your definition of "problem" may be different from theirs.
It might well be. However, 4 out of 4 seemed kind of extreme. If I depended on a windows app for some reason, I wouldn't use Linux unless it was at least gold rated on winehq. BTW, wine is starting to look quite incredible, so much is going to work with 1.2 that it will seriously affect how people think of application.
I am sorry, but it is actually your logic that is flawed.
There is nothing wrong with stating ones personal morality.
And again:
f you say their are no excuses, then you are saying that at 45 a potential parent should always choose NOT creating a life, rather than creating a life that may have autism. That is valuing a life with autism as worse than no life at all.
No. It is not about about valuing an autists' life less than no life at all. It is valuing the risk of somebody having to live through hell higher than the reward of personal gratification. Actually, your logic isn't that flawed in a strict sense. It is just, as all straw man arguments, based on a subset and/or misunderstanding of my arguments. That's why I said your point was pointless. This is not about semantics, it is about empathy, and yes morals. We do have those on slashdot. And by the way, I am an atheist.
If you say their are no excuses, then you are saying that at 45 a potential parent should always choose NOT creating a life, rather than creating a life that may have autism. That is valuing a life with autism as worse than no life at all.
No it isn't. It's about not taking risks with other peoples' lives for the sake of self-gratification. It has nothing to do with valuation, the ones suffering are the autists themselves and not, at least mostly not to the same degree, their surroundings. On the contrary, they can, as is the subject of the article, be very valuable to society. But just because patient H.M., for example, was extremely valuable to the medical society, we would not wish his fate upon others??
To me, it seems you're the one being confused and the one bringing life value into the argument. Again, it has nothing to do with valuation.
If a woman meets the right man at 45 and decides to conceive a child completely regardless of reasons, it is with total disregard of totally known risks. If adoption isn't a sufficient substitute, then having a child should be avoided.
And it's not only that. There are other things than autism, like downs and the like. It is about being too old when the grown up children need their parents help, it's about being to old to be substantially relevant to a teenage who lives in the now. Totally. Get it?
Pointless point to make. And even then, not correct. I obviously refer to the complete and deliberate act of producing a child, including conception. I am not against copulation after 45. Hell I'm all for it, the more the merrier!
But you go further even than that - that an increased chance of autism is worse than no life at all.
Eeeh. No, I didn't, you made that straw man up all by yourself. Neither was it a consequence of anything I said.
I said: "Autism is a crippling *handicap* that in the overwhelming majority of cases make life far worse." Which is true. Normally people with autism sure don't have an easy time growing up. Of course some have will have a great life.
Linux sounds too good to be true. So does Firefox.
Oh my god! Silly me running both then!....... $ apt-get remove linux firefox Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... DoneReading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Package linux is not installed, so not removed Package firefox is not installed, so not removed 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
You don't seem to understand that it doesn't matter. Autism is a crippling *handicap* that in the overwhelming majority of cases make life far worse. Society is not by far as understanding as it needs to be. It is simply a deliberate gamble with a innocent persons life when one makes babies at 45. There are absolutely *no* excuses, in my opinion.
To be honest, it's just not that. Lack of technical sophistication has nothing to do with gullibility. Ignorance is a choice one makes. In these times, when all reporting keeps trumpeting about what not to do on the internet, to think "think sounds too good to be true, I'll run it anyway"...I mean, this kind of user will get p0wn3d whatever security measures are in place.
I would disagree, there is no contradiction. For Windows applications, Microsoft has a "Certified for Windows"-program that all *serious* applications follow, it is pretty basic stuff like not doing really silly stuff on the system.
The repositories is kind of the same thing. The ones that sucks so bad that they can't live up to even the most basic demands on the platform, they don't really belong there. So I would actually say that this is exactly the way to go about things: 1. Raise the threshold of entry. Demand good application behaviour. Don't let the distros catch the Windows crap. 2. Get as much of the 3rd party software as possible into the repository. By helping developers out a bit more.
1 makes 2 harder, yes, by they are not mutually exclusive.
Of the six Netbooks I saw my friends purchase, four came with Linux. None are running Linux as the primary OS now.
You mean that these friends of yours had such problems with their preinstalled linuxes that they ALL opted to go through the trouble of installing windows? To solve what problems exactly on a preinstalled installation? Brands? Would be interesting to know. Maybe their gamez didn't run well under wine?
Because, with preinstalled linuxes, NO problems is my experience. Of course they, as all computers, *can* be corrupted, but only if the user tries hard.
Your anecdote seems very anecdotal. With regards to delusion, well, we'll see.
No they wouldn't. No one who can experience human emotions such as joy is permitted to be a lawyer.
Actually, joy is permitted as long as expressed in anticipation of monetary wealth.
Empathy, on the other hand, is strictly forbidden and was probably what you meant. Right?
Yeah, I hate that too. There is actually no way to understand how things works through man files.
Here's the first lines of what I get when i type "man sound".
man sound
Name
Sound - audio file description.
Structures
typedef struct
{
. . .
}SoundRec, *Sound;
Members
Do not dereference the members of the SoundRec structure directly. Instead use the access macros.
sound is a Sound, a pointer to a SoundRec structure.
SoundFileFormat(sound)
Accesses the int value giving the format of the sound file...
See Also
SoundCloseFile, SoundCreate, SoundFlushFile, SoundOpenFileForReading, SoundOpenFileWriting, SoundReadFile, SoundRewindFile, SoundSeekFile, SoundTellFile, SoundWriteFile.
audiolib - Network Audio System C Language Interface
man audio
No manual entry for audio
To be fair, there is a problem with sound on linux, however. There are many subsystems that does it, so which page should be displayed.
An index page of those installed, naturally, but I dont think the help system works that way.
The point is, that man files almost never provides an entry point through which one can go to learn something new, they are purely for reference when you already know everything.
And that's really stupid. Actually, not much would be needed to improve the man files. It's really about bad attitude.
It's from Ulysses...
That James Joyce fellow sure could write, couldn't he? "Lay crossed"..proper, that is. Stately, even.:-)
Reading that I felt a sting of sorrow, as it so seldom happens that today's writers use language as anything else than as a data transfer mechanism. Language can convey so much more than the just the data it contains.
I don't know what to say, really. Well. I suppose I could get away with almost anything, this being friday and me having some red wine to blame and all. OK then.
*reposting, better laid out* I kind of like this part of the code, pretty safe, really : if (!(typeof worldHasEnded == "undefined")) { document.write("YUP."); } else { document.write("NOPE."); }
I kind of like this part of the code, pretty safe, really :
if (!(typeof worldHasEnded == "undefined")) {
document.write("YUP.");
} else {
document.write("NOPE.");
}
Should work.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
For all those non-americans that also have read the book and still don't get the parents joke, there is a reason:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_the_Universe_and_Everything#Censorship
Ironically, this joke would not have been possible would it not have been for the utter stupidity of profanity censorship.
I have very little respect for the daggerman, who kills his enemies from the safety of the other end of his dagger.
I respect more the lowly grunt, who actually fights with his life during combat, with his fists and nosehair.
Cowards should not be held up as heroes.
But four-legged travel has been optimized by nature (and slightly reoptimized by human breeding to carry burdens). You won't beat it with any foreseeable technology, and you won't make the unforeseeable come any faster with research in this area.
1. What robotics do, is to mimic the already optimized stuff. And perhaps even optimize it further.
2. Robotics don't have to, unless they want to, use biologically grown materials. That is a huge upside and makes for great freedom in designing..
3. Negotiating terrain and walking are a fairly isolated problems. For example Big Dog has really shown that this problem is solved. As with all other software it will get much much better at it. As with all other hardware it will get exponentially more brainpower to help out.
So I disagree, for this specific case, and in eight years, a robot will be better than a mule. The only problem is that of energy.
Maybe it could have unfoldable solar panels to use in an emergency, to slowly make it's way home if running out of it.
The private industry is decades away from what NASA can do today.
Actually, it is the private industry that does what NASA do for NASA. Rocketdyne, Boeing, Lockheed et al ARE private companies.
The private industry can already do what NASA can, and probably more, given a budget. NASA is mostly there to manage the projects.
So it not decades away, it is billions of dollars away.
The only reason companies like Virgin Galactic don't do what NASA do is the fact that their customers aren't willing to pay billions.
It is probably just as hard, if not harder, to get people into LEO on a small budget, than it is to get them to Mars on a huge one.
Personally, I am far more impressed by SpaceShipTwo and its carrier(which is really cool) than I am of most of the (new) things the constellations program was supposed to create.
Try this when attempting to enter a club. When the bouncer denies you entry
"Attempting"....Not "if" but "when"....
Make no mistake, this is definitely Slashdot. :-)
If I were running that sort of network, that's what I would use to partition off the real money from the record keeping.
Except that in the majority of these systems, the records ARE the real money.
The banking system(and the economy in general) works through a complex debt management system.
There is not much actual money or assets there, or at least not more than needed to comply with local legislation.
The cap also served as the top to a Thermos-like bottle that chilled the instrument. WISE's infrared telescope and detectors are kept chilled inside a Thermos-like tank of solid hydrogen, called a cryostat.
The returned images will once and for all prove that stars really are huge Thermoses?
Your definition of "problem" may be different from theirs.
It might well be. However, 4 out of 4 seemed kind of extreme.
If I depended on a windows app for some reason, I wouldn't use Linux unless it was at least gold rated on winehq.
BTW, wine is starting to look quite incredible, so much is going to work with 1.2 that it will seriously affect how people think of application.
I am sorry, but it is actually your logic that is flawed.
There is nothing wrong with stating ones personal morality.
And again:
f you say their are no excuses, then you are saying that at 45 a potential parent should always choose NOT creating a life, rather than creating a life that may have autism. That is valuing a life with autism as worse than no life at all.
No. It is not about about valuing an autists' life less than no life at all.
It is valuing the risk of somebody having to live through hell higher than the reward of personal gratification.
Actually, your logic isn't that flawed in a strict sense. It is just, as all straw man arguments, based on a subset and/or misunderstanding of my arguments.
That's why I said your point was pointless. This is not about semantics, it is about empathy, and yes morals. We do have those on slashdot.
And by the way, I am an atheist.
If you say their are no excuses, then you are saying that at 45 a potential parent should always choose NOT creating a life, rather than creating a life that may have autism. That is valuing a life with autism as worse than no life at all.
No it isn't. It's about not taking risks with other peoples' lives for the sake of self-gratification.
It has nothing to do with valuation, the ones suffering are the autists themselves and not, at least mostly not to the same degree, their surroundings.
On the contrary, they can, as is the subject of the article, be very valuable to society.
But just because patient H.M., for example, was extremely valuable to the medical society, we would not wish his fate upon others??
To me, it seems you're the one being confused and the one bringing life value into the argument. Again, it has nothing to do with valuation.
If a woman meets the right man at 45 and decides to conceive a child completely regardless of reasons, it is with total disregard of totally known risks.
If adoption isn't a sufficient substitute, then having a child should be avoided.
And it's not only that. There are other things than autism, like downs and the like.
It is about being too old when the grown up children need their parents help, it's about being to old to be substantially relevant to a teenage who lives in the now. Totally. Get it?
Really? :-)
Well I'm here now, just ask away...
Pointless point to make. And even then, not correct.
I obviously refer to the complete and deliberate act of producing a child, including conception.
I am not against copulation after 45. Hell I'm all for it, the more the merrier!
But you go further even than that - that an increased chance of autism is worse than no life at all.
Eeeh. No, I didn't, you made that straw man up all by yourself. Neither was it a consequence of anything I said.
I said: "Autism is a crippling *handicap* that in the overwhelming majority of cases make life far worse."
Which is true. Normally people with autism sure don't have an easy time growing up. Of course some have will have a great life.
Linux sounds too good to be true. So does Firefox.
Oh my god! Silly me running both then! .. .. ...
$ apt-get remove linux firefox
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... DoneReading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package linux is not installed, so not removed
Package firefox is not installed, so not removed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
Thank god, it seems that i am safe, after all. :-)
You don't seem to understand that it doesn't matter.
Autism is a crippling *handicap* that in the overwhelming majority of cases make life far worse.
Society is not by far as understanding as it needs to be.
It is simply a deliberate gamble with a innocent persons life when one makes babies at 45.
There are absolutely *no* excuses, in my opinion.
To be honest, it's just not that. Lack of technical sophistication has nothing to do with gullibility. Ignorance is a choice one makes.
In these times, when all reporting keeps trumpeting about what not to do on the internet, to think "think sounds too good to be true, I'll run it anyway"...I mean, this kind of user will get p0wn3d whatever security measures are in place.
I blame TV. :-)
Come to think of it, In a sense, I actually do.
I would disagree, there is no contradiction.
For Windows applications, Microsoft has a "Certified for Windows"-program that all *serious* applications follow, it is pretty basic stuff like not doing really silly stuff on the system.
The repositories is kind of the same thing.
The ones that sucks so bad that they can't live up to even the most basic demands on the platform, they don't really belong there.
So I would actually say that this is exactly the way to go about things:
1. Raise the threshold of entry. Demand good application behaviour. Don't let the distros catch the Windows crap.
2. Get as much of the 3rd party software as possible into the repository. By helping developers out a bit more.
1 makes 2 harder, yes, by they are not mutually exclusive.
So bad it doesn't work?
I just felt that 4 out of 4 is a bit much.
Of the six Netbooks I saw my friends purchase, four came with Linux. None are running Linux as the primary OS now.
You mean that these friends of yours had such problems with their preinstalled linuxes that they ALL opted to go through the trouble of installing windows?
To solve what problems exactly on a preinstalled installation? Brands? Would be interesting to know. Maybe their gamez didn't run well under wine?
Because, with preinstalled linuxes, NO problems is my experience.
Of course they, as all computers, *can* be corrupted, but only if the user tries hard.
Your anecdote seems very anecdotal. With regards to delusion, well, we'll see.
No they wouldn't. No one who can experience human emotions such as joy is permitted to be a lawyer.
Actually, joy is permitted as long as expressed in anticipation of monetary wealth. Empathy, on the other hand, is strictly forbidden and was probably what you meant. Right?
Yeah, I hate that too. There is actually no way to understand how things works through man files. Here's the first lines of what I get when i type "man sound". man sound Name Sound - audio file description. Structures typedef struct { . . . }SoundRec, *Sound; Members Do not dereference the members of the SoundRec structure directly. Instead use the access macros. sound is a Sound, a pointer to a SoundRec structure. SoundFileFormat(sound) Accesses the int value giving the format of the sound file. ..
See Also
SoundCloseFile, SoundCreate, SoundFlushFile, SoundOpenFileForReading, SoundOpenFileWriting, SoundReadFile, SoundRewindFile, SoundSeekFile, SoundTellFile, SoundWriteFile.
audiolib - Network Audio System C Language Interface
man audio
No manual entry for audio
To be fair, there is a problem with sound on linux, however. There are many subsystems that does it, so which page should be displayed.
An index page of those installed, naturally, but I dont think the help system works that way.
The point is, that man files almost never provides an entry point through which one can go to learn something new, they are purely for reference when you already know everything.
And that's really stupid. Actually, not much would be needed to improve the man files. It's really about bad attitude.
It's from Ulysses... That James Joyce fellow sure could write, couldn't he? "Lay crossed"..proper, that is. Stately, even. :-)
Reading that I felt a sting of sorrow, as it so seldom happens that today's writers use language as anything else than as a data transfer mechanism. Language can convey so much more than the just the data it contains.
I don't know what to say, really.
Well. I suppose I could get away with almost anything, this being friday and me having some red wine to blame and all.
OK then.
You're right.
There. I said it.
My god.
Screw that. You both have horribly spelled nicks.
*reposting, better laid out*
I kind of like this part of the code, pretty safe, really :
if (!(typeof worldHasEnded == "undefined")) {
document.write("YUP.");
} else {
document.write("NOPE.");
}
Should work. :-)
I kind of like this part of the code, pretty safe, really : if (!(typeof worldHasEnded == "undefined")) { document.write("YUP."); } else { document.write("NOPE."); } Should work. :-)