This won't matter a matter a damn to *you* if employers are still allowed to fill the gap by importing workers from (or outsourcing jobs to) cheaper foreign labour markets, instead of opening up appropriately skilled, appropriately paid jobs to older workers at home.
Employers love employing young people (they're cheap and gullible, full of energy and ready to give 110% to make their mark). Older people are avoided because they know what's fair and what isn't, and they are more inclined to demand higher pay since those who have been successful usually have financial commitments.
This is an area that badly needs legislation and **every** tech worker in the Western world needs to lobby hard for this if they don't want to find themselves permanently downsized by the time they hit forty-five.
In the UK the new Labour government started out with an education campaign to sort this out. "Old Enough to Know Better" went the slogan. But it disappeared without a trace. I wonder why. Next thing we knew they were relaxing the work visa requirements.
You have not proven that you cannot have a mass collection at some distance from a star in 4-d. I can conceive at least 5 mechanisms by which it could occur.
Five? I'd genuinely like to hear the details of these mechanisms. If you can model processes in five-dimensional spacetime in your head you must be the cleverest person on this planet. Either that or not actually from this planet.
Consider that a 4-d sun would have a 3-d "surface".
OK, I follow you...
Our entire universe could conceivably be a limited view of the processes on the surface of a 4-d star or black hole.
Er..OK, I'm still with you...
Each fundamental particle could be a magnetic field line or vortex in that surface. A complex system can be an emergent property of another complex system. A single 3-D quark could be an emergent representaion of a million mile 4-D vortex on the surface of a star.
Whoa. For this to be any more credible than lunar green cheese, somebody would have to work out a physical system in that reference frame which is at least capable of explaining the precise properties and behaviour of quarks in our reference frame. Has this been done?
It is irreleveant what we find to be a "reasonable" temperatures.
I have to disagree. With the physics we have, we can't meaningfully conceptualize a universe based on anything other than space, time, matter and energy, let alone "life" based on anything other than those. And of those, matter has to be a principal requirement since it is the only one that interacts, self-assembles into interesting structures and retains state in a useful way.(*see footnote)
Matter of course only behaves in this way under a strictly limited temperature range. Hence it is important for this temperature range to be available.
Water itself is nothing more than an emergent sproperty of the complex system of molecules which is nothing more than an emergent property of [...]
All true but uterly beside the point - you're thinking way too deeply about this.
With regard to the stuff about water, you miss my point I think. I'm not saying a life bearing universe has to have water, I'm saying in order to support life based on matter it needs some substance which fulfils a similar role, and that the extremely unique and unlikely properties of water in our universe make it a reasonable bet that such substances might be rare in other physical systems in general.
I'm guessing your background is in mathematics as you appear to be relying on the "existence proof" - the whole thrust of your argument appears to be that complex systems capable of supporting life are always or almost always possible in any universe because most arrangements are physically capable of supporting complex systems. But I don't wish to dispute that. My argument is only that though you may reason life may still be possible in most weird (to us) universes, it will still be highly improbable. Don't forget that it has to arise spontaneously as well. How the hell is something as organized as a Turing machine going to spontaneously self-generate in a one dimensional universe? Apart from the limited scope for spatial arrangements, opportunities for particles to even change position relative to each other are at least going to be hampered by the fact that they have to move through their neighbours to do so. Yes, don't tell me, there is a way, they can switch positions by quantum tunnelling or switching clothes or something, but the fact is, and this is what seems to escape you, is that the more constraints you heap upon the system the less and less likely it is that life will have time to appear, evolve and become intelligent before that universe ends in whatever manner it is destined to do.
*FOOTNOTE. Different fundamental forces would mean different relative field strengths and so matter
The multiplication of other worlds is no worse than the alternative.
If we take the Copenhagen interpretation to be meaningful then we have to ask what exactly constitutes an "observer", i.e. an observer capable of collapsing the wave function. Does it have to be conscious? What is "conscious"? Is a frog conscious? A worm? A paramecium? Or can any instrumentation do it? What constitutes "instrumentation" exactly?
Even if we were to accept the controversial position that "observer" status can be afforded only to humans, how can two observers separated by some distance, and viewing the same quantum event, be sure to witness the same outcome? What about where neither lies within the other's light cone? If they do witness the same event, which one collapsed the wave function? This raises important questions about the nature of causality, at the very least. Unless we have something essentially metaphysical like Bell's pilot wave in the picture I'm afraid it may lead to a situation where what we currently assume to be a common spacetime actually consists of separate but ultimately overlapping domains of local consensus which may not agree with each other about what happened. If we're trying to avoid unnecessary complexity this is not a good place to go theoretically speaking.
Personally I have more problems with the wave collapse theory than I do with one that supposes inaccessible parallel realities. It's not written anywhere that we have to have access to everything.
In fact I see nothing wrong with a model where every possible reality exists... but 'exists' only means 'is observable by its inhabitants'. To them, we don't exist either.
Two-dimensional organisms for starters: Just because you can't have a conventional mouth-alimentary_canal-anus is no evidence that you cannot have a complex multicellular organism. (Not that life needs to be multi cellular, or even cellular at all). Even if we take the silly assumption that life requires a "conventional" digestive system it could still use an adsorption type system, a vacuole type system, or a two-way digestive system like hydras have - one opening acts as both mouth and anus.
[...]
Well argued, and I have a lot of sympathy with some of the points you made, but there must be a reason that these systems appear only in relatively simple life forms on Earth and that organisms large enough to exhibit complex behaviour don't utilize them. It would be reasonable to assume that it is more difficult for such lifeforms to progress beyond a certain size.
Of the more outlandish sytems you envisage the best one can say is that they are not absolutely impossible. But they must be relatively difficult to eveolve, or else nature would not have avoided them so completely here on Earth.
With regard to the topology of spacetime, as another poster reminded me, even-numbered dimensionality would preclude stable orbits so either matter would not accumulate at all (would remain highly dispersed gas & dust) or it would all collapse into black holes, or lumps would form and then wander around erratically. Stars are required to provide an energy gradient, and planets are required to sometimes provide a collection of matter at a suitable place in that gradient. These im turn require suitably balanced fundamental forces and the right number of dimensions.
molecule like water - slightly more than weakly polar, which remains liquid at a range of useful temperatures
That entire section is nothing more than a DEFINITION of anthropomorphism! You are ASSUMING that life has to resemble us! You might as well claim that life has to be made from DNA and must have two eyes and a nose.
Calm down, eh? I am assuming nothing of the sort. I am just reminding you that life based on matter at what we would call reasonable temperatures combines chemically, that is by atoms coming into close proximity and exchanging and sharing electrons. For a whole number of reasons too numerous and complex to go into here this generally requires a suitable liquid solvent for things to proceed at a useful rate. Even where catalyst surfaces containing aluminate etc. are involved. Water is uniquely suited for this purpose because it is both polar and liquid at "room" temperature. Fortunately (and the anthropic principle comes into play here) water is relatively abundant in our universe because it requires only hydrogen (the most abundant element) and oxygen (which is released by supernovae in large quantities).
The significance of this is that water's unlikely properties are only possible because the relative strengths of the four fundamantal forces lie within a very narrow range. It follows that most differently-built universes would not provide a substance like it.
I would speculate the requirement is merely a system rich/complex enough to contain patterns which are capable of creating copies of themselves. The medium the patterens are composed of is irrelevant. The only requirement is that the universe contain some sort of complex system. We happen to be built on the complex system of carbon chain molecules. There are all sorts of complex systems in our universe,
True, true, true.
there will be various sorts of complex systems in almost any universe.
Not true. Our universe is not necessarily representative. eg. a one-dimensional universe woule necessarily support less complexity than does ours. A two-dimensional one also for the rea
Mathematicians say that some infinite sets can contain more members than other infinites sets, eg the set of real numbers is more highly populated than the set of natural numbers (effectively integers). This holds wherever one infinite set can be mapped onto a subset of another infinite set. Also in that particular case the set of real numbers that can't be mapped is larger than the set that can. So it's meaningful to postulate, on statistical grounds, that the number of sterile potential universes is larger than the number of fecund potential universes.
A small point of order: if I'm not mistaken "Many Worlds" and "Many Histories" are just two names for the same QM interpretation - the one originally postulated by Everett, which places the different potential outcomes of a quantum event as *actual* outcomes in different universes which share a common past.
The alternative (and more mainstream) QM interpretation which explains the appearance of a just one single result from the quantum event as being due to the collapse of the wave function - that one is known as the Copenhagen interpretation.
Everett's solution was a bit too "out there" for most serious physicists at the time it got out. IIRC he tried to disown it afterwards and didn't return to idea until much later.
Hopefully some Physics geek will happen by and confirm this:o)
This isn't a case of anthropomorphism or earth-centrism or anything like that. It's an outcome of basic physics (it does take into account that physics may be different in other universes, though).
To take a simple example at the grossest level: imagine a universe in which symmetry broke in such a way that instead of three macroscopic spatial dimensions resulting, there were only two. A two-dimensional universe would be incapable of hosting structures of very significant complexity such as multicellular lifeforms. There would be strict limitations on size becaues a 2-D lifeform cannot possess any kind of internal transport system for alimentation or circulation - it would simply fall apart (try drawing one and see how internal channels effectively divide the creature into pieces).
Four dimensional universes (and higher order dimensional spaces) also have topological problems which would make life difficult though you'll have to look those up for yourself.
Even in three dimensional universes, very slight modifications to the relative strength of the four fundamental post-symmetry-breaking forces would make the universe appear very different.
There will be universes composed entirely of radiation - but radiation does not interact well enough to form structures spontaneously.
There will be universes where stars shine but never explode, thus elements heavier than helium are never released from their cores - and you can't get interesting chemical reactions from just hydrogen and helium.
There will be many dark universes where star-sized agglomerations of matter simply do not ignite at all, thus energy cannot be concentrated sufficiently enough in any one place to fuel a biosphere.
Even if you had hot stars and an interesting array of elements it may still be devoid of life if there was no possible *simple* (and thus common) combination of those elements available to provide a molecule like water - slightly more than weakly polar, which remains liquid at a range of useful temperatures (warm enough to enable chemical reaction at a significant rate, cool enough to allow stable reaction products).
It's all very well to postulate "energy beings" or Horta-style silicon-based lifeforms but basic physics just doesn't make these very likely. There are strong practical reasons why all life on Earth is based on water and carbon compounds. There may be other constellations of physical laws which could generate a universe complex enough to support life, but there are far, far more that couldn't, no matter how good your imagination is.
Thinkpads rock - they are solidly built and can take a lot of punishment.
The built-in wireless aerial and bluetooth support don't appear on all T30's, it depends on the precise model so you have to ask for it specifically.
The advantage of course is that it leaves your PCMCIA slot free should you need it - and perhaps more importantly, when you are on the move the last thing you need to be doing is rummaging around for peripherals, dropping them on the floor etc. So built-in is definitely the way to go. (AFAIK the only other laptops with these features are a couple of top-end Toshiba Satellite and Portege models. WHEN are we going to see them on affordable clone laptops?)
The Japanese are the world's leading early adopters and they are probably in wireless up to their eyeballs out there. Also, more or less everybody travels by train so there are more opportunities to get some work done while commuting to and from work etc than there would be in the US where most people seem to drive everywhere.
Your girlfriend is very fortunate. Japan is a fantastic place.
I have enough crap in my life to deal without having to cope with appliances giving me 'attitude'.
An 'attitude' from a PDA based on near-current technology would surely be as intolerable as a bad attitude from, say, an employee or manservant with the IQ of an imbecile (slow, insufficient memory, poor software) who frequently forgets things, falls asleep just when you need him (flat battery syndrome) and even has occasional fits (locks up neeeding a cold reset).
If the technology improves to the point where the PDA is clever enough and reliable enough that we can more or less turn over to it the responsibility for running our lives (for this to happen it needs to be intelligent in the sense of creative, proactive and insightful) - then maybe we can put up with attitude.
This embarrassing project is doomed to fail for two very obvious reasons:
1) Very few (non-Iraqi) people or organizations will want a domain name visibly associated with an ignoble war, death and destruction, and a long-term dictatorship.
2) Very few people (and I include the members of Mensa which are mentioned as an example in CITRI's web page) will want a domain name that broadcasts how proud they are of their ability to pass standard intelligence tests. You see it's just not cool to be clever. Not that way, anyway.
I suspect the only takers - at a knock-down price - will be the tasteless owners of shoddy porn, gambling and con-merchant websites. And spammers great and small.
Is this the language that started out as OPL on the on the original Psion Organiser handhelds? I had a Psion II, a brick-like thing with a 6Mhz CPU and a 2-line x 16-character mono alphanumeric display. I loved it to bits. When I left college it was the only computer I had but OPL was sophisticated enough for me to sharpen my coding skills on.
Programming this thing gave me my first experience of staying up all night "in the zone" then being shocked to hear birdsong and looking up to see the pre-dawn sky lightening through the window,
I remember writing a debugger, disassembler and reverse interpreter so I could debug programs for which the source had been wiped (you soon ran out of storage even with the 64K eprom memory pack, which you couldn't easily erase). I remember writing a blues melody generator (on the pathetic litle piezo speaker) to help me with guitar practice. And a little proglet that emitted an ultraonic whine to make the dog next door shut up whenever he started his interminable barking.
The first thing it taught me was the difference between theory and practice. The lecturers at college were heavily into data abstraction and functional programming (this was pre-OO) and that was great - but just try programming something recursive when you've only got 8K to play with and you soon learn the value of unrolling it into an iterative version before punching it in.
Hard to believe now but because of the limited hardware, for anything bigger than a few lines, I used to code up all my programs on a good old fashioned spiral bound notepad (easy to rip out a page if you need to rewrite a subroutine) and only key them in when I was sure I was near to getting a good compile. It was actually much quicker that way, and being forced to think things out like that rather than depending on trial & error made me a better programmer.
Good Old Psion Organizer II. Now lying unloved at the bottom of a dusty old drawer. Wouldn't do to be seen with it now!
the other posters are correct to say that implementations of ISAM differ. In particular the indexing scheme may be more or less sophisticated (eg. simple one-level hash index as in a cheap PC database package vs. multi-level indexing with keys grouped in buckets like in expensive multi-user VMS RMS). However even in the more complex forms it isn't that difficult to understand, just take one of the smaller files and get a hex editor on it...
This might be old news but its certainly *big* news. It's just that the post is a little slow around here (i.e. 3x10^8 m/s).
Being big news, it certainly raises some interesting questions:
1). Given the enormous power output of this burst ("more than a million times the combined output of all the stars in the Milky Way" for at least a minute, then falling off) what effect would this have had on any organic life in that galaxy? More specifically, could anything bigger than a bacterium have survived?
2). Are there any hypernova candidates in our own galaxy or the local Magellanic clouds?
3). If there are, how much warning will we get before they go off?
4). Assuming only technologies which don't contravene our current understanding of physics, how long would take us to retreat to a safe distance (the intergalactic void presumably)?
One can only suspect that this might be one of those theoretical (until now) pan-galactic sterilizing "reset" events. Which might settle the debate over the Fermi paradox once and for all.
many of the folk that made the switch (finally) realized we are DOING THE RIGHT THING.
That's arrant nonsense. Although I'm sure you'd like it to be true, it's just not borne out by talking to people who switched - as long as you avoid trying to force them to adopt one side or the other, that is. The attitude you've adopted tends to suggest that any questioning along those lines from you would strongly seek one particular answer.
Yes, yes, yes. Spot on, sir. I'm a father of two and I agree with every single thing you said.
I'll just add one thing: not everybody gets to have the birth attended by highly experience professionals. My wife was attended at her first delivery in hospital by a couple of young teenage trainee midwives, and at her second at least one of the midwives was more experienced. However on both occasions they failed to notice toward the end of labour that the heart monitor showed the baby was suffering "distress" each time my wife bore down on her contractions. I had to make a fuss about it before they paid any attention at all. It turned out (in both my son's and my daughter's births) that they were being born with the umbilicus wrapped around the neck. When my wife bore down it was literally strangling them and stopping the flow of blood to the babies' brain.
My son (my firstborn) was in such bad shape when he came out that he scored only 2 out of 10 on the Apgard scale. I won't tell you what he looked like. However he did recover in a couple of days.
When my daughter was born this time I had an idea what was going on and I demanded they give my wife oxygen to help keep the baby's brain oxygenated. They duly fitted the mask but the idiots connected it to the wrong tap nozzle and it was left to me to point out that the oxygen was pouring out of the tap into the room instead of going through the mask, before they did anything about it.
So much for hospital births. Anyway, my point is - to the father-to-be - keep your wits about you and don't assume just because the person at the end of the bed is wearing a nurses uniform or a surgical gown that they are actually competent or motivated.
I guess most people especially those with adequate health insurance will enjoy more professional treatment, and I don't mean to be alarmist, but its worth considering that while childbirth is often dangerous and difficult, and unpredictable things can happen, it's *your* baby and at that moment while your wife is incapacitated with her contractions, it's really all down to you and you alone to ensure that nobody fucks up. You're not an optional extra in the delivery room, you're vitally necessary.
Anyway. congratulations and good luck, I hope it all goes smoothly.
In both the US and the UK, anti-war sentiment lessened once open hostilities were actually declared. That was only to be expected. There are two main reasons:
1). A war, having started, is not so easy to stop and would probably be over anyway by the time a dissatisfied citzenry could cause enough trouble to force their government to pull out. So many people more or less give up and just hope it will be over quickly.
2). As soon as the military goes into battle, debate is squelched by right wing bigots who go all purple-faced and start shouting things like "Are you saying you don't support our troops? Are you saying you'd rather Saddam won? Well? Are you? Are you?"
Personally I'd like to take these purple-faced ignorant fuckwits and drop them right into the front line to see how fond of war they really are.
That apparent 20% swing isn't made up people who changed their mind and thought war was a good idea after all. It's made up of people who have been intimidated by hawks into adopting a "patriotic" attitude.
Whether a demonstration is being given for pro- or anti-war causes only the most motivated people will turn up. Those million that did, represent the high end of spectrum of dissent including an unknown number of people who agreed with them but had other things to do on that day.
You conveniently ignored the fact that there has been NO sign of any million-strong demonstration supporting the invasion of Iraq. Only a fool would try to argue that this indicates a population broadly in favour of a war.
it will be exceedingly difficult for Blair to maintain his leadership
I can't see us getting anybody that different to replace him - even if Labour were voted out of office. There is simply very little diversity in UK politics at present.
I believe the reason for that is that the axis of the political debate, has tilted away from left vs. right but it's going to take time for this to be reflected in the party alignment of professional politicians. Simply speaking, the parties we'd need to represent the opposite ends of the new political spectrum just don't exist yet.
I hear what you're saying but I don't agree that a dry, remote intellectual knowledge of the possibility of casualties can be compared to actually seeing the devastation first hand. If the nightly TV news broadcasts showed you the dead, mutilated bodies close up like you'd see if you were there yourself - that would carry an emotional impact you couldn't ignore as easily as you can a mere reported total number. I am sure it would influence your views on the desirability of this war in a way that statistics alone cannot.
Slashdot Mirror
This won't matter a matter a damn to *you* if employers are still allowed to fill the gap by importing workers from (or outsourcing jobs to) cheaper foreign labour markets, instead of opening up appropriately skilled, appropriately paid jobs to older workers at home.
Employers love employing young people (they're cheap and gullible, full of energy and ready to give 110% to make their mark). Older people are avoided because they know what's fair and what isn't, and they are more inclined to demand higher pay since those who have been successful usually have financial commitments.
This is an area that badly needs legislation and **every** tech worker in the Western world needs to lobby hard for this if they don't want to find themselves permanently downsized by the time they hit forty-five.
In the UK the new Labour government started out with an education campaign to sort this out. "Old Enough to Know Better" went the slogan. But it disappeared without a trace. I wonder why. Next thing we knew they were relaxing the work visa requirements.
Five? I'd genuinely like to hear the details of these mechanisms. If you can model processes in five-dimensional spacetime in your head you must be the cleverest person on this planet. Either that or not actually from this planet.
OK, I follow you...
Er..OK, I'm still with you...
Whoa. For this to be any more credible than lunar green cheese, somebody would have to work out a physical system in that reference frame which is at least capable of explaining the precise properties and behaviour of quarks in our reference frame. Has this been done?
I have to disagree. With the physics we have, we can't meaningfully conceptualize a universe based on anything other than space, time, matter and energy, let alone "life" based on anything other than those. And of those, matter has to be a principal requirement since it is the only one that interacts, self-assembles into interesting structures and retains state in a useful way.(*see footnote)
Matter of course only behaves in this way under a strictly limited temperature range. Hence it is important for this temperature range to be available.
All true but uterly beside the point - you're thinking way too deeply about this.
With regard to the stuff about water, you miss my point I think. I'm not saying a life bearing universe has to have water, I'm saying in order to support life based on matter it needs some substance which fulfils a similar role, and that the extremely unique and unlikely properties of water in our universe make it a reasonable bet that such substances might be rare in other physical systems in general.
I'm guessing your background is in mathematics as you appear to be relying on the "existence proof" - the whole thrust of your argument appears to be that complex systems capable of supporting life are always or almost always possible in any universe because most arrangements are physically capable of supporting complex systems. But I don't wish to dispute that. My argument is only that though you may reason life may still be possible in most weird (to us) universes, it will still be highly improbable. Don't forget that it has to arise spontaneously as well. How the hell is something as organized as a Turing machine going to spontaneously self-generate in a one dimensional universe? Apart from the limited scope for spatial arrangements, opportunities for particles to even change position relative to each other are at least going to be hampered by the fact that they have to move through their neighbours to do so. Yes, don't tell me, there is a way, they can switch positions by quantum tunnelling or switching clothes or something, but the fact is, and this is what seems to escape you, is that the more constraints you heap upon the system the less and less likely it is that life will have time to appear, evolve and become intelligent before that universe ends in whatever manner it is destined to do.
*FOOTNOTE. Different fundamental forces would mean different relative field strengths and so matter
The multiplication of other worlds is no worse than the alternative.
... but 'exists' only means 'is observable by its inhabitants'. To them, we don't exist either.
If we take the Copenhagen interpretation to be meaningful then we have to ask what exactly constitutes an "observer", i.e. an observer capable of collapsing the wave function. Does it have to be conscious? What is "conscious"? Is a frog conscious? A worm? A paramecium? Or can any instrumentation do it? What constitutes "instrumentation" exactly?
Even if we were to accept the controversial position that "observer" status can be afforded only to humans, how can two observers separated by some distance, and viewing the same quantum event, be sure to witness the same outcome? What about where neither lies within the other's light cone? If they do witness the same event, which one collapsed the wave function? This raises important questions about the nature of causality, at the very least. Unless we have something essentially metaphysical like Bell's pilot wave in the picture I'm afraid it may lead to a situation where what we currently assume to be a common spacetime actually consists of separate but ultimately overlapping domains of local consensus which may not agree with each other about what happened. If we're trying to avoid unnecessary complexity this is not a good place to go theoretically speaking.
Personally I have more problems with the wave collapse theory than I do with one that supposes inaccessible parallel realities. It's not written anywhere that we have to have access to everything.
In fact I see nothing wrong with a model where every possible reality exists
Well argued, and I have a lot of sympathy with some of the points you made, but there must be a reason that these systems appear only in relatively simple life forms on Earth and that organisms large enough to exhibit complex behaviour don't utilize them. It would be reasonable to assume that it is more difficult for such lifeforms to progress beyond a certain size.
Of the more outlandish sytems you envisage the best one can say is that they are not absolutely impossible. But they must be relatively difficult to eveolve, or else nature would not have avoided them so completely here on Earth.
With regard to the topology of spacetime, as another poster reminded me, even-numbered dimensionality would preclude stable orbits so either matter would not accumulate at all (would remain highly dispersed gas & dust) or it would all collapse into black holes, or lumps would form and then wander around erratically. Stars are required to provide an energy gradient, and planets are required to sometimes provide a collection of matter at a suitable place in that gradient. These im turn require suitably balanced fundamental forces and the right number of dimensions.
Calm down, eh? I am assuming nothing of the sort. I am just reminding you that life based on matter at what we would call reasonable temperatures combines chemically, that is by atoms coming into close proximity and exchanging and sharing electrons. For a whole number of reasons too numerous and complex to go into here this generally requires a suitable liquid solvent for things to proceed at a useful rate. Even where catalyst surfaces containing aluminate etc. are involved. Water is uniquely suited for this purpose because it is both polar and liquid at "room" temperature. Fortunately (and the anthropic principle comes into play here) water is relatively abundant in our universe because it requires only hydrogen (the most abundant element) and oxygen (which is released by supernovae in large quantities).
The significance of this is that water's unlikely properties are only possible because the relative strengths of the four fundamantal forces lie within a very narrow range. It follows that most differently-built universes would not provide a substance like it.
True, true, true.
Not true. Our universe is not necessarily representative. eg. a one-dimensional universe woule necessarily support less complexity than does ours. A two-dimensional one also for the rea
Mathematicians say that some infinite sets can contain more members than other infinites sets, eg the set of real numbers is more highly populated than the set of natural numbers (effectively integers). This holds wherever one infinite set can be mapped onto a subset of another infinite set. Also in that particular case the set of real numbers that can't be mapped is larger than the set that can. So it's meaningful to postulate, on statistical grounds, that the number of sterile potential universes is larger than the number of fecund potential universes.
A small point of order: if I'm not mistaken "Many Worlds" and "Many Histories" are just two names for the same QM interpretation - the one originally postulated by Everett, which places the different potential outcomes of a quantum event as *actual* outcomes in different universes which share a common past.
:o)
The alternative (and more mainstream) QM interpretation which explains the appearance of a just one single result from the quantum event as being due to the collapse of the wave function - that one is known as the Copenhagen interpretation.
Everett's solution was a bit too "out there" for most serious physicists at the time it got out. IIRC he tried to disown it afterwards and didn't return to idea until much later.
Hopefully some Physics geek will happen by and confirm this
Why exactly is life impossible...see my other comment
This isn't a case of anthropomorphism or earth-centrism or anything like that. It's an outcome of basic physics (it does take into account that physics may be different in other universes, though).
To take a simple example at the grossest level: imagine a universe in which symmetry broke in such a way that instead of three macroscopic spatial dimensions resulting, there were only two. A two-dimensional universe would be incapable of hosting structures of very significant complexity such as multicellular lifeforms. There would be strict limitations on size becaues a 2-D lifeform cannot possess any kind of internal transport system for alimentation or circulation - it would simply fall apart (try drawing one and see how internal channels effectively divide the creature into pieces).
Four dimensional universes (and higher order dimensional spaces) also have topological problems which would make life difficult though you'll have to look those up for yourself.
Even in three dimensional universes, very slight modifications to the relative strength of the four fundamental post-symmetry-breaking forces would make the universe appear very different.
There will be universes composed entirely of radiation - but radiation does not interact well enough to form structures spontaneously.
There will be universes where stars shine but never explode, thus elements heavier than helium are never released from their cores - and you can't get interesting chemical reactions from just hydrogen and helium.
There will be many dark universes where star-sized agglomerations of matter simply do not ignite at all, thus energy cannot be concentrated sufficiently enough in any one place to fuel a biosphere.
Even if you had hot stars and an interesting array of elements it may still be devoid of life if there was no possible *simple* (and thus common) combination of those elements available to provide a molecule like water - slightly more than weakly polar, which remains liquid at a range of useful temperatures (warm enough to enable chemical reaction at a significant rate, cool enough to allow stable reaction products).
It's all very well to postulate "energy beings" or Horta-style silicon-based lifeforms but basic physics just doesn't make these very likely. There are strong practical reasons why all life on Earth is based on water and carbon compounds. There may be other constellations of physical laws which could generate a universe complex enough to support life, but there are far, far more that couldn't, no matter how good your imagination is.
Only a week in Tokyo, on a business trip. I guess it was inevitable that anyone who'd spent more time there would have a less rosy view of the place.
What IS the dirtiest telling? Do tell.
Thinkpads rock - they are solidly built and can take a lot of punishment.
The built-in wireless aerial and bluetooth support don't appear on all T30's, it depends on the precise model so you have to ask for it specifically.
The advantage of course is that it leaves your PCMCIA slot free should you need it - and perhaps more importantly, when you are on the move the last thing you need to be doing is rummaging around for peripherals, dropping them on the floor etc. So built-in is definitely the way to go. (AFAIK the only other laptops with these features are a couple of top-end Toshiba Satellite and Portege models. WHEN are we going to see them on affordable clone laptops?)
The Japanese are the world's leading early adopters and they are probably in wireless up to their eyeballs out there. Also, more or less everybody travels by train so there are more opportunities to get some work done while commuting to and from work etc than there would be in the US where most people seem to drive everywhere.
Your girlfriend is very fortunate. Japan is a fantastic place.
I have enough crap in my life to deal without having to cope with appliances giving me 'attitude'.
An 'attitude' from a PDA based on near-current technology would surely be as intolerable as a bad attitude from, say, an employee or manservant with the IQ of an imbecile (slow, insufficient memory, poor software) who frequently forgets things, falls asleep just when you need him (flat battery syndrome) and even has occasional fits (locks up neeeding a cold reset).
If the technology improves to the point where the PDA is clever enough and reliable enough that we can more or less turn over to it the responsibility for running our lives (for this to happen it needs to be intelligent in the sense of creative, proactive and insightful) - then maybe we can put up with attitude.
Actually, if that were to happen we'd deserve it.
This embarrassing project is doomed to fail for two very obvious reasons:
1) Very few (non-Iraqi) people or organizations will want a domain name visibly associated with an ignoble war, death and destruction, and a long-term dictatorship.
2) Very few people (and I include the members of Mensa which are mentioned as an example in CITRI's web page) will want a domain name that broadcasts how proud they are of their ability to pass standard intelligence tests. You see it's just not cool to be clever. Not that way, anyway.
I suspect the only takers - at a knock-down price - will be the tasteless owners of shoddy porn, gambling and con-merchant websites. And spammers great and small.
For a science-fictionalized context, you may enjoy the second book Space in Stephen Baxter's excellent Manifold trilogy.
Is this the language that started out as OPL on the on the original Psion Organiser handhelds? I had a Psion II, a brick-like thing with a 6Mhz CPU and a 2-line x 16-character mono alphanumeric display. I loved it to bits. When I left college it was the only computer I had but OPL was sophisticated enough for me to sharpen my coding skills on.
Programming this thing gave me my first experience of staying up all night "in the zone" then being shocked to hear birdsong and looking up to see the pre-dawn sky lightening through the window,
I remember writing a debugger, disassembler and reverse interpreter so I could debug programs for which the source had been wiped (you soon ran out of storage even with the 64K eprom memory pack, which you couldn't easily erase). I remember writing a blues melody generator (on the pathetic litle piezo speaker) to help me with guitar practice. And a little proglet that emitted an ultraonic whine to make the dog next door shut up whenever he started his interminable barking.
The first thing it taught me was the difference between theory and practice. The lecturers at college were heavily into data abstraction and functional programming (this was pre-OO) and that was great - but just try programming something recursive when you've only got 8K to play with and you soon learn the value of unrolling it into an iterative version before punching it in.
Hard to believe now but because of the limited hardware, for anything bigger than a few lines, I used to code up all my programs on a good old fashioned spiral bound notepad (easy to rip out a page if you need to rewrite a subroutine) and only key them in when I was sure I was near to getting a good compile. It was actually much quicker that way, and being forced to think things out like that rather than depending on trial & error made me a better programmer.
Good Old Psion Organizer II. Now lying unloved at the bottom of a dusty old drawer. Wouldn't do to be seen with it now!
the other posters are correct to say that implementations of ISAM differ. In particular the indexing scheme may be more or less sophisticated (eg. simple one-level hash index as in a cheap PC database package vs. multi-level indexing with keys grouped in buckets like in expensive multi-user VMS RMS). However even in the more complex forms it isn't that difficult to understand, just take one of the smaller files and get a hex editor on it...
This might be old news but its certainly *big* news. It's just that the post is a little slow around here (i.e. 3x10^8 m/s).
Being big news, it certainly raises some interesting questions:
1). Given the enormous power output of this burst ("more than a million times the combined output of all the stars in the Milky Way" for at least a minute, then falling off) what effect would this have had on any organic life in that galaxy? More specifically, could anything bigger than a bacterium have survived?
2). Are there any hypernova candidates in our own galaxy or the local Magellanic clouds?
3). If there are, how much warning will we get before they go off?
4). Assuming only technologies which don't contravene our current understanding of physics, how long would take us to retreat to a safe distance (the intergalactic void presumably)?
One can only suspect that this might be one of those theoretical (until now) pan-galactic sterilizing "reset" events. Which might settle the debate over the Fermi paradox once and for all.
gawk; talk; date; wine; grep;
touch; unzip; strip; touch; gasp; finger; gasp; mount; fsck; more; yes; fsck; gasp; eject;
umount;
make clean; make mrproper;
sleep
That's arrant nonsense. Although I'm sure you'd like it to be true, it's just not borne out by talking to people who switched - as long as you avoid trying to force them to adopt one side or the other, that is. The attitude you've adopted tends to suggest that any questioning along those lines from you would strongly seek one particular answer.
Ha ha ha...urk! That was so funny I nearly swallowed my tongue.
Yes, yes, yes. Spot on, sir. I'm a father of two and I agree with every single thing you said.
I'll just add one thing: not everybody gets to have the birth attended by highly experience professionals. My wife was attended at her first delivery in hospital by a couple of young teenage trainee midwives, and at her second at least one of the midwives was more experienced. However on both occasions they failed to notice toward the end of labour that the heart monitor showed the baby was suffering "distress" each time my wife bore down on her contractions. I had to make a fuss about it before they paid any attention at all. It turned out (in both my son's and my daughter's births) that they were being born with the umbilicus wrapped around the neck. When my wife bore down it was literally strangling them and stopping the flow of blood to the babies' brain.
My son (my firstborn) was in such bad shape when he came out that he scored only 2 out of 10 on the Apgard scale. I won't tell you what he looked like. However he did recover in a couple of days.
When my daughter was born this time I had an idea what was going on and I demanded they give my wife oxygen to help keep the baby's brain oxygenated. They duly fitted the mask but the idiots connected it to the wrong tap nozzle and it was left to me to point out that the oxygen was pouring out of the tap into the room instead of going through the mask, before they did anything about it.
So much for hospital births. Anyway, my point is - to the father-to-be - keep your wits about you and don't assume just because the person at the end of the bed is wearing a nurses uniform or a surgical gown that they are actually competent or motivated.
I guess most people especially those with adequate health insurance will enjoy more professional treatment, and I don't mean to be alarmist, but its worth considering that while childbirth is often dangerous and difficult, and unpredictable things can happen, it's *your* baby and at that moment while your wife is incapacitated with her contractions, it's really all down to you and you alone to ensure that nobody fucks up. You're not an optional extra in the delivery room, you're vitally necessary.
Anyway. congratulations and good luck, I hope it all goes smoothly.
In both the US and the UK, anti-war sentiment lessened once open hostilities were actually declared. That was only to be expected. There are two main reasons:
1). A war, having started, is not so easy to stop and would probably be over anyway by the time a dissatisfied citzenry could cause enough trouble to force their government to pull out. So many people more or less give up and just hope it will be over quickly.
2). As soon as the military goes into battle, debate is squelched by right wing bigots who go all purple-faced and start shouting things like "Are you saying you don't support our troops? Are you saying you'd rather Saddam won? Well? Are you? Are you?"
Personally I'd like to take these purple-faced ignorant fuckwits and drop them right into the front line to see how fond of war they really are.
That apparent 20% swing isn't made up people who changed their mind and thought war was a good idea after all. It's made up of people who have been intimidated by hawks into adopting a "patriotic" attitude.
You conveniently ignored the fact that there has been NO sign of any million-strong demonstration supporting the invasion of Iraq. Only a fool would try to argue that this indicates a population broadly in favour of a war.
I can't see us getting anybody that different to replace him - even if Labour were voted out of office. There is simply very little diversity in UK politics at present.
I believe the reason for that is that the axis of the political debate, has tilted away from left vs. right but it's going to take time for this to be reflected in the party alignment of professional politicians. Simply speaking, the parties we'd need to represent the opposite ends of the new political spectrum just don't exist yet.
I hear what you're saying but I don't agree that a dry, remote intellectual knowledge of the possibility of casualties can be compared to actually seeing the devastation first hand. If the nightly TV news broadcasts showed you the dead, mutilated bodies close up like you'd see if you were there yourself - that would carry an emotional impact you couldn't ignore as easily as you can a mere reported total number. I am sure it would influence your views on the desirability of this war in a way that statistics alone cannot.