An incidental challenge in developing a computer system that could decipher Ugaritic (inscribed on tablet) was developing a way to digitally render Ugaritic symbols.
Riiiiight. What did they feed their software? Photographs of stone tablets?
Google has dominated the NIST machine translation competition for years before
they stopped participating. I don't think that they need too much external help.
a doctor diagnosing patients in the rural areas of Africa or a Homeland Security agent working to thwart an act of bioterrorism
One of these doesn't belong. I'll give you a hint: There are billions of one (that we don't hear enough about from anyone),[...]
Your point is an entirely valid one, and I agree.
A nitpick though: There are no billions of people in the rural areas of Africa. Not even a single billion.
The whole of Africa has a population of only a wee bit over a billion, and over 100 million of those live
in the 50 largest cities alone.
Including everything down to the level of decently-sized towns, this number more than doubles.
Africa as a whole (yes, that's a rather invalid viewpoint, but you started it;-) is way more urbanized
than you seem to realize. That of course doesn't remove the need for much better health care.
Apparently, the accelerometers themselves (3 pairs of them) are mounted to within one picometre
No they are not. That is entirely impossible to do, as this is quite a bit smaller than atomar scale.
Even looking at them with too many photons would already change their position by more than that.
Their relative position is measured to that precision in service.
Evil guy (lifting the $5 wrench): "OK, and now you'll give me the other password."
In other words: Hidden volumes are only useful if nobody knows they exist. Yes, security by obscurity.
Trouble is, you can't prove a hidden volume isn't there. This feature actually enables useless wrench applications...
... only imagine the amount of energy needed to melt the copper for the long distance high voltage lines... somehow, I think this might not be the best approach to tapping Sahara Energy.
Let's not imagine it, let's calculate:
10cm copper core (that's very generous), 1000km long (more than enough)
--> 7854m^3, or 70 000 tons
Now let's melt it:
It's a cold day, so we start at 10 degrees Celsius, i.e. we have to heat it by about 1075K and therefore need
"Energy to heat to melting point + Energy to overcome fusion enthalpy" = 4.3e13 Joules, that's 43TJ.
Let the HVDC line have a capacity of 1GW, which is entirely realistic and probably too low. That's 1GJ/s.
So, time to transfer the energy needed to melt this outrageously fat string of copper: 43TJ/(1GJ/s) = a tiny bit over 12 hours.
data sets will be provided under COFUR (Cost Of Fulfilling User Request) conditions
...to parties that submit a request with a good reason and get it approved.
You can't just show up with a bunch of hard drives and ask for the data, even if you're
prepared to pay for costs that would produce.
ESA (and ESA-related, TerraSAR is German-only) projects have a long and annoying history
of keeping their data under wraps despite public funding and no objections by the scientific
parties (priorities of potential discoveries matter) involved.
Until this changes, it's still SRTM data for everyone.
I remember some long-ago speculation that drying paint could capture sounds. Some guy was going find Michaelangelo coughing or something like that. I couldnt find a reference on google.
I'm pretty sure that's some April Fool's Joke by a scientific journal (Nature?) being run amok by "journalists".
Why fight gravity, when you can just spin it in space?
How do you provide a vector for "down" in space? Without it, you're just coating
the inside of your telscope's tube with your reflecting liquid. Not too useful.
There's only one current definition of the Liter, however, there have been
several over its history.
Very high precision measurements from between 1901 and 1964 have to be converted to the
current (and initial) definition, which can be quite annoying when dealing with historical data.
I need a random assortment of water bills, phone bills, as proof of address when opening a bank account in France, which does has ID cards.
France has an ID card (which is free, by the way - or paid for by your taxes, if you prefer), but no (mandatory) registry of residency.
There's no mandatory record of where people live.
Germany e.g. has an ID card (which is mandatory for those without passports, and has to be paid separately) and a mandatory registry of residency.
Although the record can be out of date by quite a bit, (the "your landlord has to notify the registry" rule has been abolished a
while ago, and fines for not registering changes of residency are on the moderate side), you never need more than your ID card to
open any kind of account there.
Another advantage of the "registered residents" system: Everyone with a right to vote is automatically inscribed on the electoral
roll and invited by mail to upcoming elections.
Of course, having you residence on record has its disadvantages too, and I understand those that don't like the idea.
And yet there is all sorts of political speech that is illegal in Germany. For instance you can not say heil Hitler on tv even in a sitcom like Hogan's Heros where they where making fun of the Nazis.
Hogan's Heores is quite popular in Germany, Heil Hitler in the dubbing included. In fact, the arts and sciences (history!) are the main exception to that law.
Heck, Berlin had building façades filled with swastika flags and Hitler-greeting nazi soldiers running around big streets for multiple movies over the last decades.
Nobody got arrested for it.
Germany does however have a law against displaying nazi symbols outside those exceptions. Given Germany's history, that's understandable. And by the way,
this law was co-written by americans.
We don't need a manned mission to get rid of this wayward and useless piece of former satellite space junk... we just need to blast it out of the path it's going to some other one.
Yup, because an expanding cloud of space shrapnel with orbital velocities is so much better than a single satellite with a known orbit.
Slashdot Mirror
I saw the movie 8th Wonderland a while ago in a special screening.
It is an interesting take on the concept of a virtual "nation without territory".
"The 8th's" first public act is an underground effort to bolt condom dispensers to
every church in Rome overnight.
This reminds me a bit of that.
An incidental challenge in developing a computer system that could decipher Ugaritic (inscribed on tablet) was developing a way to digitally render Ugaritic symbols.
Riiiiight. What did they feed their software? Photographs of stone tablets?
Google has dominated the NIST machine translation competition for years before
they stopped participating. I don't think that they need too much external help.
a doctor diagnosing patients in the rural areas of Africa or a Homeland Security agent working to thwart an act of bioterrorism
One of these doesn't belong. I'll give you a hint: There are billions of one (that we don't hear enough about from anyone),[...]
Your point is an entirely valid one, and I agree.
;-) is way more urbanized
A nitpick though: There are no billions of people in the rural areas of Africa. Not even a single billion.
The whole of Africa has a population of only a wee bit over a billion, and over 100 million of those live
in the 50 largest cities alone.
Including everything down to the level of decently-sized towns, this number more than doubles.
Africa as a whole (yes, that's a rather invalid viewpoint, but you started it
than you seem to realize. That of course doesn't remove the need for much better health care.
A geeky UN-affiliated NGO built systems where the local military police could confiscate their computers and find absolutely nothing incriminating.
Oh come on, don't be so vague. Remember where you wrtie this... Details, dammit!
Apparently, the accelerometers themselves (3 pairs of them) are mounted to within one picometre
No they are not. That is entirely impossible to do, as this is quite a bit smaller than atomar scale.
Even looking at them with too many photons would already change their position by more than that.
Their relative position is measured to that precision in service.
You can see things like typography, [...]
Slartibartfast's signature?
And what well is that?
Earth. Every body with mass creates a gravity well in spacetime,
the denser and heavier the body the deeper the well.
The metaphor is slightly broken, as Earth isn't the well, it just causes it.
Who is this Frost guy and why do they need a pain ray to stop him from killing crops?
Just arrest him already if he's damaging property. Sheesh...
Evil guy (lifting the $5 wrench): "OK, and now you'll give me the other password."
In other words: Hidden volumes are only useful if nobody knows they exist. Yes, security by obscurity.
Trouble is, you can't prove a hidden volume isn't there. This feature actually enables useless wrench applications...
A metric assload is roughly equivalent to 2.2 Imperial assloads.
Wouldn't those be arseloads?
kimono dragons
Dragons in silk cloaks? Awesome!
... only imagine the amount of energy needed to melt the copper for the long distance high voltage lines ... somehow, I think this might not be the best approach to tapping Sahara Energy.
Let's not imagine it, let's calculate:
10cm copper core (that's very generous), 1000km long (more than enough)
--> 7854m^3, or 70 000 tons
Now let's melt it:
It's a cold day, so we start at 10 degrees Celsius, i.e. we have to heat it by about 1075K and therefore need
"Energy to heat to melting point + Energy to overcome fusion enthalpy" = 4.3e13 Joules, that's 43TJ.
Let the HVDC line have a capacity of 1GW, which is entirely realistic and probably too low. That's 1GJ/s.
So, time to transfer the energy needed to melt this outrageously fat string of copper:
43TJ/(1GJ/s) = a tiny bit over 12 hours.
Sounds like a good deal to me.
Solved problem, HVDC. Read it, might make you look less like a moron the next time.
Did you really think that nobody thought about that beforehand?
data sets will be provided under COFUR (Cost Of Fulfilling User Request) conditions
You can't just show up with a bunch of hard drives and ask for the data, even if you're
prepared to pay for costs that would produce.
ESA (and ESA-related, TerraSAR is German-only) projects have a long and annoying history
of keeping their data under wraps despite public funding and no objections by the scientific
parties (priorities of potential discoveries matter) involved.
Until this changes, it's still SRTM data for everyone.
I remember some long-ago speculation that drying paint could capture sounds. Some guy was going find Michaelangelo coughing or something like that. I couldnt find a reference on google.
I'm pretty sure that's some April Fool's Joke by a scientific journal (Nature?) being run amok by "journalists".
Why fight gravity, when you can just spin it in space?
How do you provide a vector for "down" in space? Without it, you're just coating
the inside of your telscope's tube with your reflecting liquid. Not too useful.
There is only one definition of Litre
There's only one current definition of the Liter, however, there have been
several over its history.
Very high precision measurements from between 1901 and 1964 have to be converted to the
current (and initial) definition, which can be quite annoying when dealing with historical data.
they should be capable of launching crewed missions a few years into the future.
Woah, time travel too? I had no idea!
Can they get them back to the present?
Ah screw it, spell checkers have made spelling obsolete anyway.
True. And it'll get totally useless with software that can wreck a nice beach.
Why would robots require some sort of lunar base?
They need a powered USB hub to recharge.
I need a random assortment of water bills, phone bills, as proof of address when opening a bank account in France, which does has ID cards.
France has an ID card (which is free, by the way - or paid for by your taxes, if you prefer), but no (mandatory) registry of residency.
There's no mandatory record of where people live.
Germany e.g. has an ID card (which is mandatory for those without passports, and has to be paid separately) and a mandatory registry of residency.
Although the record can be out of date by quite a bit, (the "your landlord has to notify the registry" rule has been abolished a
while ago, and fines for not registering changes of residency are on the moderate side), you never need more than your ID card to
open any kind of account there.
Another advantage of the "registered residents" system: Everyone with a right to vote is automatically inscribed on the electoral
roll and invited by mail to upcoming elections.
Of course, having you residence on record has its disadvantages too, and I understand those that don't like the idea.
as long as a 23-floor skyscraper is tall
How many football field lenghts would that be?
Yes.
And yet there is all sorts of political speech that is illegal in Germany. For instance you can not say heil Hitler on tv even in a sitcom like Hogan's Heros where they where making fun of the Nazis.
Hogan's Heores is quite popular in Germany, Heil Hitler in the dubbing included. In fact, the arts and sciences (history!) are the main exception to that law.
Heck, Berlin had building façades filled with swastika flags and Hitler-greeting nazi soldiers running around big streets for multiple movies over the last decades.
Nobody got arrested for it.
Germany does however have a law against displaying nazi symbols outside those exceptions. Given Germany's history, that's understandable. And by the way,
this law was co-written by americans.
We don't need a manned mission to get rid of this wayward and useless piece of former satellite space junk... we just need to blast it out of the path it's going to some other one.
Yup, because an expanding cloud of space shrapnel with orbital velocities is so much better than a single satellite with a known orbit.