You are grasping for straws. First off, someone observing something is NOT science. They have to test the observation against a theory, write about how it did or didn't, and be published. THAT is science.
On THAT note, the number of folks who have had their lives ended for publishing something that today is common sense, but during the inquisition was heresy, are legion.
Galileo would not have been executed for seeing the moons of Jupiter. Had he not recanted, he would have been executed for publishing a theory that the sun was the center of the solar system, and Hey look I have an example of things orbiting other things to back this up.
During the dark ages people were absolutely convinced that theory was correct. And anything that disagreed with the theory was burned, as were the heretics who observed it.
No it wont. Outsourcing is less about economics than it is about breaking the backs of IT professionals. In the 90s programmers, analysts, and support techs were scarce, in high demand, and knew it.
The industry decided to teach us a lesson. And the really didn't care how crappy the scabs they hired were.
Talk to me about economics when the Chinese cease working for slave wages, and we aren't busting other countries, regularly, for dumping. (I.E. selling below cost to drive other competitors out of the market.)
It's one thing to compete in a market. What exists today is neither a market, nor particularly competitive.
I remember putting together a mind-storms based robot after getting a kit one Christmas. It was a simple "hit the bumper, back up and turn" algorythem. Only I randomized the amount of time spent backing up and turning.
People thought it was some sort of sophisticated artificial intelligences. I didn't have the heart to tell them how simple the working really where.
On that note, I would also like to bring to the attention of the slashdot community the immense body of work that's been done using "the game of life" type systems. One particular paper Modeled the social dynamics of corruption in an enlightening way.
Anyone asking about how an entire population can work toward a collective goal ought to read the Tao Te Ching.
Human too are capable of working on a large, semi-understood goal with individual actors working out the details as they go. We've been doing it for eons. And we don't know why.
Re:Good example of emergent behavior
on
Of Ants and Robots
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· Score: 4, Interesting
"Emergent" behavior? No I dare say that in the case of ants, there is a collective idea about what the problem is, and roughly how to solve it. The details are left to individuals.
Supplies low? Forage for food. Den flooding? Get the larvea out of the water. Territory being incroached by invaders? Attack.
Chemical trails might explain how ants know where to go, and roughly what they will do when they get there. It doesn't explain their ability to work out the logistics on the fly.
A great example of this are army ants. They actually build large, complex structures out of the bodies of their members. There are elaborate assembly and unassembly steps. Chemical markers to not explain how they do it.
It could be that this is designed to work in conjunction with some other light concentrator, like a fresnel lense. What you do with those systems is basically use a cheap plastic lense focus light from one square meter down to a few centimeters.
At which point getting 120W/in is actually doable.
I am a resident of the "North East." Our peak electricity usage is on sunny days during the summer. That's when everybody cranks up their air conditioning to dump the energy the sun delivered to their roof out into the outside air through the miracle of air conditioning.
This peak demand electricity is the costliest to produce. That's when you bust out the natural gas turbines, and start running your boilers and reactors at full tilt. A field of solar cells, at the right price, would really lower the cost of delivering electricity during these peak times.
I recall a news story a few years ago about a resident in my home town (Philly) who outfitted his roof with solar cells. All of his appliances were DC powered, and during some seasons of the year his meter flowed backward; he was producing more power than he was pulling off the grid.
Hang on a sec. You use Photoshop and 3dmax, and you have an issue with proprietary closed source stuff? And when you are talking about chunks of software that cost a couple hundred each, that more than eats the cost difference between the two platforms.
My iBook was $1600 new with 768Mb of Ram and a 60 Gig hd. A comparable PC with equivient RAM, disk space, firewire, built-it wireless and bluetooth costs the same or more.
Kernel be damned, there are funtctional differenced between all three product lines. While games may not care, if you are writing a business or workgroup app you had better make sure it knows the difference.
The Sony in question actually ran Gentoo for about 3 years. I finally had to reformat it back to windows when I traded it in for my new iBook.
But that information would, of course, have completely invalidated my grounds to bitch about Microsoft, wouldn't it. (BTW, thanx Tridge for all the sony hacks to the Kernel...)
One platform line? You mean like XP Home, XP Pro, and XP Media Center?
Considering the average lifespan for a PC is 3 years, the fact there are any machines running 2000, let alone 9x, is pitiful. I can tell of many a friend who bought XP and later reformatted back to 2K.
Slashdot Mirror
What? Doesn't everybody?
On THAT note, the number of folks who have had their lives ended for publishing something that today is common sense, but during the inquisition was heresy, are legion.
Galileo would not have been executed for seeing the moons of Jupiter. Had he not recanted, he would have been executed for publishing a theory that the sun was the center of the solar system, and Hey look I have an example of things orbiting other things to back this up.
Still wouldn't do anything for the flame wars on discussion forums though.
Giordano Bruno (1600)
Lucilio Vanini (1619)
And that's in the first page of "Scientists Burned at stake" search on Google.
During the dark ages people were absolutely convinced that theory was correct. And anything that disagreed with the theory was burned, as were the heretics who observed it.
The Germans don't like to march in the sun.
The industry decided to teach us a lesson. And the really didn't care how crappy the scabs they hired were.
It's one thing to compete in a market. What exists today is neither a market, nor particularly competitive.
If it is any consolation, my coworker is from India. (Studied in the US and liked it enough to stay.) She can't understand these call center folks.
People thought it was some sort of sophisticated artificial intelligences. I didn't have the heart to tell them how simple the working really where.
On that note, I would also like to bring to the attention of the slashdot community the immense body of work that's been done using "the game of life" type systems. One particular paper Modeled the social dynamics of corruption in an enlightening way.
Human too are capable of working on a large, semi-understood goal with individual actors working out the details as they go. We've been doing it for eons. And we don't know why.
Supplies low? Forage for food. Den flooding? Get the larvea out of the water. Territory being incroached by invaders? Attack.
Chemical trails might explain how ants know where to go, and roughly what they will do when they get there. It doesn't explain their ability to work out the logistics on the fly.
A great example of this are army ants. They actually build large, complex structures out of the bodies of their members. There are elaborate assembly and unassembly steps. Chemical markers to not explain how they do it.
And here I tought the fact that complex problems can be broken down and solved by simplistic devices was a founding tenant of computer science.
At which point getting 120W/in is actually doable.
This peak demand electricity is the costliest to produce. That's when you bust out the natural gas turbines, and start running your boilers and reactors at full tilt. A field of solar cells, at the right price, would really lower the cost of delivering electricity during these peak times.
I recall a news story a few years ago about a resident in my home town (Philly) who outfitted his roof with solar cells. All of his appliances were DC powered, and during some seasons of the year his meter flowed backward; he was producing more power than he was pulling off the grid.
Yeah, and backups are also barcoded and hand-tranported by courier to and offsite storage/security vault.
Only after someone figures out that the password to his SideKick is "cashwhore".
Well, next week it will by goatse.
Recite? My vitim's impact statement involves a baseball bat. No wait, it's on St. Patric's day. I'll use a shillelagh.
Yeah, but if I wear green would I be siding with the greedy bastards or my drunk ancestors from Ireland?
My iBook was $1600 new with 768Mb of Ram and a 60 Gig hd. A comparable PC with equivient RAM, disk space, firewire, built-it wireless and bluetooth costs the same or more.
Kernel be damned, there are funtctional differenced between all three product lines. While games may not care, if you are writing a business or workgroup app you had better make sure it knows the difference.
But that information would, of course, have completely invalidated my grounds to bitch about Microsoft, wouldn't it. (BTW, thanx Tridge for all the sony hacks to the Kernel...)
Not everybody buys a Dell, HP, or IBM. Some folks (dramatic music) custom build their own computers.
Considering the average lifespan for a PC is 3 years, the fact there are any machines running 2000, let alone 9x, is pitiful. I can tell of many a friend who bought XP and later reformatted back to 2K.