Ridley Scott's talent is demonstrable. Only a self-important ignoramus would deny a man's artistic achievements just because he once saw him drunk. And only a boor would behave as you behaved at that screening.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
most slashdotters comments miss very basic understanding. Kinda like reading a bunch of microsoft fans discussing linux. <p> I hope that wasn't aimed at me - I did do a Biochemistry degree. As in molecular biology. It's just that back then (mid 1980's) although of course we knew how much the X and Y differed the human chromosomal complement was still <i>always</i> routinely described as "23 pairs". From the three replies I got it sounds as if this might have changed, but it seems like hair splitting to me. The X and Y are indeed a pair, not just because of the homologous region - watch what happens during meiosis if you don't believe me! 23 pairs it is.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
I like music as much as the next guy but I'm always disappointed by the lack of non-music radio programming. Radio is good for a much wider range of content. When you have to spend a lot of time in the car wouldn't it be great if you could get real brain food from your radio instead of a thousand channels of mindless thump-thump-thump and the same endless repetition over and over of skimmed news headlines and sickeningly predictable political sound bites.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Another example is that you can set up your program to call you on your WAP phone when your stock price is at a certain level and prompt you to buy/sell.
You can use SMS (short messaging service) for that. There are plenty of SMS gateways on the net and most modern cell phones support SMS. In the UK, anyway.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Spot on. People *would* be prepared to pay for information services if the cost each time was negligible, i.e. a few pennies. But if the cost per click is over a dollar then most people will (quite sensibly) not be interested - we all know how these things can mount up over time. The internet desperately needs an efficient, secure and convenient implementation of micro-payments. But it simply won't happen until the banks get together and agree on a common system.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
I don't see a problem. the resolution is 640x480, or 480x640 in the default portrait mode. Since most web pages are designed to be viewable on just over half of an 800x600 display (i.e. about 400x600), this device should display such pages adequately. If you want a larger web pad, these already exist.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Children who torture flies grow up to torture dogs, and later, people.</i> <p> Bullshit, you're making this up. I used to pull the legs off of bugs when I was a toddler. But except for two occasions when I've had to kill a mortally injured cat to end its suffering, I've never hurt an animal. And I don't torture people either. I think this is rather more typical than the scenario you suggest.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Parallax depends entirely on binocular (stereoscopic) vision. With just one functional eye, you can't experience parallax without moving your head from side to side.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
It's bad enough that eBay have rolled over to Microsoft and are assisting them in blocking a legal trade in second-user software.
But what really infuriates me about this is that one specific account holder (Microsoft) can enjoy the privileges of a registered user without being subject to any penalties as a result of negative feedback because eBay have rigged the system to make them immune.
I have posted a complaint to this effect in four of eBay's community feedback discussion groups in an attempt to incite a boycott. Things being as they are, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if these posts get pulled. I wouldn't be much more surprised if my account gets revoked. Like I'd care anyway.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Unix is Unix. If you don't like it, then feel free to write your own operating system. Just don't suppose for a minute that anyone's going to let you fuck ours up.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Really, who cares? This isn't the burning issue. Fact is, any papers of any worth whatever will be downloaded and stored by others working in the same field. The University where the paper originates will certainly have a copy.
The real issue which everybody seems to be ignoring is that most scientific journals charge exorbitant subscription fees. Remember that in order to cover some very active fields (eg neuroscience) you need access to a dozen journals. This puts access to scientific papers completely our of most peoples' reach since most people don't live within a short walking distance of a University library.
Most published scientific research comes out of universities and government-funded laboratories and much of it is ultimately paid for by you the public. In any event most scientists today would surely agree that this most fertile fruit of human knowledge should belong to humanity at large, not a select few.
Us open source types often bang on about how the open source model of software development is theoretically sound because it closely resembles the peer-review model of scientific progress. But while with open source software absolutely anybody can obtain code through easily accessible channels and abslutely anybody is welcome to contribute, with mainstream scientific research not only are laymen mostly excluded from actively participating, they also generally can't even get to read the published details.
The whole system of publication in subscription-only journals is thoroughly outdated and completely inappropriate for the so-called "information age" IMHO.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Are you sure about that? I was told a long time ago that lack of interest from the Chinese was the primary reason for Esperanto's failure to gain acceptance. The Chinese weren't interested in Esperanto because it contained no contribution from Chinese languages. It is basically Indo-European in structure; no surprise there really since it was invented and developed predominantly by native speakers of European languages. It's doubtful that you could translate much serious Chinese writing into any European language without losing a great deal of the meaning.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
The French wish like hell that English would go away and French would be the, er... Lingua Franca.
But there's really no chance of that happening. Because of Britain's recent Imperialism English is now the language of diplomacy and trade in half the third world. Also since it was the nearest thing to a de facto international language in the century that saw the widespread development of telecommunications, it's even spoken widely in the developed world.
So that's pretty much that: English is already widely used as an international language. By now it would require an act of God to replace it with something else.
That's irony I suppose. Anybody see a parallel between the internet and the old Bible story of the Tower of Babel?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
It's the NAT layer preventing us from running our own servers that is the most odious aspect of all this IMHO.
I have just sent the following communications to BT and Oftel:
To BT I wrote:
I am very unimpressed with the severe limitations placed on the ADSL service BT is offering.
I was very much looking forward to hosting my own web server, but it appears that not only is this impossible under the current service offering, I will also be unable to use my own SMTP server or any kind of server at all.
I know from ADSL users in the US that this is not due to any technical limitations imposed by necessity but is simply due to a policy decision by BT to limit the service in this way. It seems more than likely that BT intends to force users to pay for a web hosting service when this is not really necessary for any technical or practical reasons.
I feel that this is yet another clear example of BT leveraging their monopoly over the local loop in an improper way. I will be therefore also be contacting Oftel to request that they either remove this monopoly or force you to stop forcing Network Address Translation on ADSL users and allow us to run our own server software.
And to Oftel I wrote:
BT's new ADSL service has been deliberately designed with unnecessary limitations which damage the value proposition for end users.
The worst of these is that it is not possible for users to run any sort of server software. There is no technical reason why this should be so, but they have inserted a layer of Network Address Translation (NAT) between the users and the internet which prevents servers from being accessible from the outside world.
I have no doubt that BT seeks to force their users to pay for web hosting services etc. in the expectation that they will get some of the business. I am utterly incensed by this; it is yet another clear example of BT cynically abusing its monoply over the local loop. The customers yet again find themselves robbed of any alternative.
Please note that in other countries such as the Netherlands and the US where ADSL has been available for some time, customers are indeed able to run their own servers as a part of the standard service.
I am therefore requesting, in the strongest possible terms, that OFTEL immediately takes one of the following two actions:
i) to force BT to remove the NAT which is hiding the servers in my ADSL connection
ii) to remove BT's monopoly on the local loop forthwith, i.e. not to wait until next year.
As I implied there are other problems with BT's ADSL offering but the NAT restriction is plainly intolerable. BT continues to take advantage of their monopoly by refusing to provide the full service available in overseas telecoms markets which have been fully privatised.
I look forward to an early reply.
I urge all existing and potential ADSL users in the UK to send your own complaints to these bodies. I am sure most of you can write more persuasive letters than I did. Pick an issue: complain about the NAT, complain about the poor support for non-Windows addresses, complain about the restriction to single computer, complain about the contention ratio; whatever genuine complaint you make will help to drive home the message that BT are fucking us in the ass and getting away with it. We are the customers and we are not happy, either with BT's abuse of its monopoly or with OFTEL's old-boy-network, kid-gloves treatment of the same.
What you seem to be saying is that a Universe *can't* have a positive net mass because the generation of space in which the mass is embedded must always exactly cancel out the mass. If that's really so, then Universe generation has no associated cost whatever. It certainly makes it seem more credible that infinite universes representing all possibilities are created out of the void.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
I kinda was hoping for alternating Bangs and Crunches, it allows one to imagine perhaps existing again in another iteration.
A Universe that lasts forever and dies an entropy death kind of does not allow that.
How depressing...
It's no problem at all. According to the dominant theories:
Time is measured only from big bang to big crunch (and even then we're not sure that it keeps flowing forward during the collapse phase). Whatever, all spacetime is destroyed along with the universe at the big crunch. So, supposing an oscillating big bang cosmology: any subsequent big bang starts at time t=0 again, as if it were a replay of the original. Or - more to the point - as if it were concurrent with the original.
So sequential iterations of the big bang are exactly equivalent to completely unconnected alternate universes or alternate world lines.
However, the zero net content of the universe must cancel out (almost) exactly at the big crunch and there probably isn't going to be much of a bounce anyway. I therefore doubt that the oscillating universe was ever a realistic model, even if a collapse *was* on the cards.
Does that mean we don't get more than one go? Absolutely not. The same process of quantum fluctuation that provided our universe with a kickstart can (indeed must) have happened an infinite number of times, often resulting in a big bang.
All realities that *can* exist *do* exist, at least they do from the point of view of their inhabitants. But to the inhabitants of any specific universe, their universe and any baby universes spawned from it are all there is and all there ever will be. The siblings can never be known.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
The space is all still there, only it will be curved a little more tightly (since the mass is all compacted down within a fairly small event horizon). The mass/energy is all frozen just inside the event horizon, falling (infinitesimally slowly, from the POV of an outside observer) towards the central singularity. It will reach the singularity at time t=infinity.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
A "hole" in spacetime develops when a singularity forms. The hole doesn't "go" anywhere, it's just as if you removed a piece of spacetime. There is literally no space or time where something can exist.
For a stationary black hole carrying no electrical charge, the singularity has the dimensions of a single point of zero size. You can't traverse this region since you'd need to be stripped down to your component subatomic particles in order to do so. Tidal forces near the singularity would see to that anyway...
Furthermore, the extreme curvature of spacetime in the vicinity would delay your arrival at the singularity until an infinite amount of time had elapsed in reference frames away from the black hole.
However, singularities may be formed with different geometry if the black hole is rotating (the usual case for a natural "collapsar" black hole) or if it carries an electric charge. In some such cases there are solutions which represent trajectories through the black hole without annihilation by the singularity.
There are also solutions to the GR equations which imply that the throat of the black hole may be connected with some other region of spacetime, either in this universe or in another.
So far as I am aware, these exotic possibilities have not been ruled out on theoretical grounds. Therefore it is possible at least in principle for information and/or matter to be transmitted through a suitable black hole to a remote space and/or time or even to a different universe.
However the resources required to manipulate a sufficiently large black hole to the required degree (or to build one from scratch) are so enormous that this technology will certainly be beyond our means for a very long time indeed, most likely for ever.
The universe, for instance, isn't a singularity that "expanded".
Well...I almost hate to say it but that is indeed pretty much what most "big bang" cosmologists do think the Universe is. In a nutshell: a few kg of matter spontaneously formed out of the void by some process of quantum uncertainty. This event is indeed commonly described as a singularity, BTW, because it forms the t=0 boundary for the universe.
As this mass sprang into existence it flew apart, creating spacetime as it did so. But before the void could reclaim its borrowed matter to balance the books, inflation kicked in; the energy released by the expansion of spacetime was condensed into matter and so even if the initial seed was returned, everything else was still created out of nothing by compensating with an increase in negative energy. The net energy content of the universe is therefore zero (and hence there is no violation of the law of conservation of mass/energy).
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Slashdot Mirror
Ridley Scott's talent is demonstrable. Only a self-important ignoramus would deny a man's artistic achievements just because he once saw him drunk. And only a boor would behave as you behaved at that screening.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
most slashdotters comments miss very basic understanding. Kinda like reading a bunch of microsoft fans discussing linux.
<p>
I hope that wasn't aimed at me - I did do a Biochemistry degree. As in molecular biology. It's just that back then (mid 1980's) although of course we knew how much the X and Y differed the human chromosomal complement was still <i>always</i> routinely described as "23 pairs". From the three replies I got it sounds as if this might have changed, but it seems like hair splitting to me. The X and Y are indeed a pair, not just because of the homologous region - watch what happens during meiosis if you don't believe me! 23 pairs it is.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I like music as much as the next guy but I'm always disappointed by the lack of non-music radio programming. Radio is good for a much wider range of content. When you have to spend a lot of time in the car wouldn't it be great if you could get real brain food from your radio instead of a thousand channels of mindless thump-thump-thump and the same endless repetition over and over of skimmed news headlines and sickeningly predictable political sound bites.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
You can use SMS (short messaging service) for that. There are plenty of SMS gateways on the net and most modern cell phones support SMS. In the UK, anyway.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
IT TOOK more than a decade for the Human Genome Project to sequence the 24 different human chromosomes...
24?? Last I looked there were 23 pairs in humans. Looks like the author accumulated an extra pair of chromosomes somewhere along the line
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
All I can say is ...it's True!
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Spot on. People *would* be prepared to pay for information services if the cost each time was negligible, i.e. a few pennies. But if the cost per click is over a dollar then most people will (quite sensibly) not be interested - we all know how these things can mount up over time. The internet desperately needs an efficient, secure and convenient implementation of micro-payments. But it simply won't happen until the banks get together and agree on a common system.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I'm surprised your computer stayed up long enough for you to be able to finish typing that in.
I guess you're not running Netscape then.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I don't see a problem. the resolution is 640x480, or 480x640 in the default portrait mode. Since most web pages are designed to be viewable on just over half of an 800x600 display (i.e. about 400x600), this device should display such pages adequately. If you want a larger web pad, these already exist.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Children who torture flies grow up to torture
dogs, and later, people.</i>
<p>
Bullshit, you're making this up. I used to pull the legs off of bugs when I was a toddler. But except for two occasions when I've had to kill a mortally injured cat to end its suffering, I've never hurt an animal. And I don't torture people either. I think this is rather more typical than the scenario you suggest.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Parallax depends entirely on binocular (stereoscopic) vision. With just one functional eye, you can't experience parallax without moving your head from side to side.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
It's bad enough that eBay have rolled over to Microsoft and are assisting them in blocking a legal trade in second-user software.
But what really infuriates me about this is that one specific account holder (Microsoft) can enjoy the privileges of a registered user without being subject to any penalties as a result of negative feedback because eBay have rigged the system to make them immune.
I have posted a complaint to this effect in four of eBay's community feedback discussion groups in an attempt to incite a boycott. Things being as they are, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if these posts get pulled. I wouldn't be much more surprised if my account gets revoked. Like I'd care anyway.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
If you want a truly random source, how about measuring the Brownian motion in, say, a nice hot strong cup of tea...
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Unix is Unix. If you don't like it, then feel free to write your own operating system. Just don't suppose for a minute that anyone's going to let you fuck ours up.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Really, who cares? This isn't the burning issue. Fact is, any papers of any worth whatever will be downloaded and stored by others working in the same field. The University where the paper originates will certainly have a copy.
The real issue which everybody seems to be ignoring is that most scientific journals charge exorbitant subscription fees. Remember that in order to cover some very active fields (eg neuroscience) you need access to a dozen journals. This puts access to scientific papers completely our of most peoples' reach since most people don't live within a short walking distance of a University library.
Most published scientific research comes out of universities and government-funded laboratories and much of it is ultimately paid for by you the public. In any event most scientists today would surely agree that this most fertile fruit of human knowledge should belong to humanity at large, not a select few.
Us open source types often bang on about how the open source model of software development is theoretically sound because it closely resembles the peer-review model of scientific progress. But while with open source software absolutely anybody can obtain code through easily accessible channels and abslutely anybody is welcome to contribute, with mainstream scientific research not only are laymen mostly excluded from actively participating, they also generally can't even get to read the published details.
The whole system of publication in subscription-only journals is thoroughly outdated and completely inappropriate for the so-called "information age" IMHO.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Wait a minute. It's not because of Britain's imperialism.
It's because
a) The navy (and army) backing british imperialsim was better than its competitors
</i>
Hmm, you *could* look at it like that...
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Yes, sorry that's what I meant to say. So its true then?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I've heard it said that up until at least the early Roman Empire, the city folk spoke Latin, but the peasants spoke Etruscan.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Are you sure about that? I was told a long time ago that lack of interest from the Chinese was the primary reason for Esperanto's failure to gain acceptance. The Chinese weren't interested in Esperanto because it contained no contribution from Chinese languages. It is basically Indo-European in structure; no surprise there really since it was invented and developed predominantly by native speakers of European languages. It's doubtful that you could translate much serious Chinese writing into any European language without losing a great deal of the meaning.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
The French wish like hell that English would go away and French would be the, er... Lingua Franca.
But there's really no chance of that happening. Because of Britain's recent Imperialism English is now the language of diplomacy and trade in half the third world. Also since it was the nearest thing to a de facto international language in the century that saw the widespread development of telecommunications, it's even spoken widely in the developed world.
So that's pretty much that: English is already widely used as an international language. By now it would require an act of God to replace it with something else.
That's irony I suppose. Anybody see a parallel between the internet and the old Bible story of the Tower of Babel?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I have just sent the following communications to BT and Oftel:
To BT I wrote:
And to Oftel I wrote: I urge all existing and potential ADSL users in the UK to send your own complaints to these bodies. I am sure most of you can write more persuasive letters than I did. Pick an issue: complain about the NAT, complain about the poor support for non-Windows addresses, complain about the restriction to single computer, complain about the contention ratio; whatever genuine complaint you make will help to drive home the message that BT are fucking us in the ass and getting away with it. We are the customers and we are not happy, either with BT's abuse of its monopoly or with OFTEL's old-boy-network, kid-gloves treatment of the same.Suitable online complaint forms can be found here at BT and here at OFTEL.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
What you seem to be saying is that a Universe *can't* have a positive net mass because the generation of space in which the mass is embedded must always exactly cancel out the mass. If that's really so, then Universe generation has no associated cost whatever. It certainly makes it seem more credible that infinite universes representing all possibilities are created out of the void.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
A Universe that lasts forever and dies an entropy death kind of does not allow that.
How depressing...
It's no problem at all. According to the dominant theories:
Time is measured only from big bang to big crunch (and even then we're not sure that it keeps flowing forward during the collapse phase). Whatever, all spacetime is destroyed along with the universe at the big crunch. So, supposing an oscillating big bang cosmology: any subsequent big bang starts at time t=0 again, as if it were a replay of the original. Or - more to the point - as if it were concurrent with the original.
So sequential iterations of the big bang are exactly equivalent to completely unconnected alternate universes or alternate world lines.
However, the zero net content of the universe must cancel out (almost) exactly at the big crunch and there probably isn't going to be much of a bounce anyway. I therefore doubt that the oscillating universe was ever a realistic model, even if a collapse *was* on the cards.
Does that mean we don't get more than one go? Absolutely not. The same process of quantum fluctuation that provided our universe with a kickstart can (indeed must) have happened an infinite number of times, often resulting in a big bang.
All realities that *can* exist *do* exist, at least they do from the point of view of their inhabitants. But to the inhabitants of any specific universe, their universe and any baby universes spawned from it are all there is and all there ever will be. The siblings can never be known.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
The space is all still there, only it will be curved a little more tightly (since the mass is all compacted down within a fairly small event horizon). The mass/energy is all frozen just inside the event horizon, falling (infinitesimally slowly, from the POV of an outside observer) towards the central singularity. It will reach the singularity at time t=infinity.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
A "hole" in spacetime develops when a singularity forms. The hole doesn't "go" anywhere, it's just as if you removed a piece of spacetime. There is literally no space or time where something can exist.
For a stationary black hole carrying no electrical charge, the singularity has the dimensions of a single point of zero size. You can't traverse this region since you'd need to be stripped down to your component subatomic particles in order to do so. Tidal forces near the singularity would see to that anyway...
Furthermore, the extreme curvature of spacetime in the vicinity would delay your arrival at the singularity until an infinite amount of time had elapsed in reference frames away from the black hole.
However, singularities may be formed with different geometry if the black hole is rotating (the usual case for a natural "collapsar" black hole) or if it carries an electric charge. In some such cases there are solutions which represent trajectories through the black hole without annihilation by the singularity.
There are also solutions to the GR equations which imply that the throat of the black hole may be connected with some other region of spacetime, either in this universe or in another.
So far as I am aware, these exotic possibilities have not been ruled out on theoretical grounds. Therefore it is possible at least in principle for information and/or matter to be transmitted through a suitable black hole to a remote space and/or time or even to a different universe.
However the resources required to manipulate a sufficiently large black hole to the required degree (or to build one from scratch) are so enormous that this technology will certainly be beyond our means for a very long time indeed, most likely for ever.
The universe, for instance, isn't a singularity that "expanded".
Well...I almost hate to say it but that is indeed pretty much what most "big bang" cosmologists do think the Universe is. In a nutshell: a few kg of matter spontaneously formed out of the void by some process of quantum uncertainty. This event is indeed commonly described as a singularity, BTW, because it forms the t=0 boundary for the universe.
As this mass sprang into existence it flew apart, creating spacetime as it did so. But before the void could reclaim its borrowed matter to balance the books, inflation kicked in; the energy released by the expansion of spacetime was condensed into matter and so even if the initial seed was returned, everything else was still created out of nothing by compensating with an increase in negative energy. The net energy content of the universe is therefore zero (and hence there is no violation of the law of conservation of mass/energy).
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction