Since c is most likely a constant we can say: something that is x light years away is y years old (actually, x = y for most cases, I think.). How do we measure the distance between our galaxy and another? No rocket science (but [theoretical] astrophysics):
Though I have no idea how exactly they did it this time. That's just the general procedure. According to TFA that's just an estimation and the exact age of the galaxy is yet to be determined; that's what those new telescopes would be useful for.
What's even more interesting though:
The astronomers used a relatively nearby massive cluster of galaxies known as Abell 1689, roughly 2.2 billion light-years away, to magnify the light from the more distant galaxy directly behind it. This natural telescope is called a gravitational lens. Remember: when you're glancing through space, you're not only taking a look at the 3 space dimensions, but the 4th, time, actually starts playing a role. The sun could explode right now and we would only notice it in about 8 minutes...
There is no way Apple will agree on agreeing with anyone else - especially if it's some pesky open-source distributors or Sun, who are not in the desktop, but the server market (mostly). They are a) going to buy the stuff (cups, khtml) b) or completely ignore everyone else and roll their own, like they always did.
I don't say this is a bad thing - I'm rather trying to point out that the OP is wishful thinking. And to add to the list: Gentoo has several alternatives. Heck, there are two versions of their baselayout and you can use einit and initng (and maybe a third... I can't remember right now).
Let's face it: SystemVInit lies dead and rotten with a few people still clinging on to it, but more because of momentum than anything else. For one thing, it's awfully slow. When I moved my laptop from a tuned Gentoo (einit) to Debian I was really happy to know suspend is finally in the kernel - it would take forever to boot. Literally. About a minute! For a laptop, no services whatsoever (OK, save apache, nfsd and ntpd)
What's coming now are the Standards Wars. They've always been there (well, as long as there is more than one manufacturer) and they'll eventually settle. Nobody is going to use launchd except Apple, nobody is going to use SMF except Sun. *BSDs will hide behind sysV for a while - and Ubuntu is one of the early-adopters distro, always including the New Stuff - sometimes with catastrophic results (7.10 was a PITA), so they are the natural candidate for providing us with a new system - or at least a proposal therefor. And Gentoo... well, einit doesn't sound that bad. They've surely replaced the default framebuffer! uvesafb is a billion times better than vesafb-tng - and even that came from Spock (not the Vulcanian, a Gentoo dev). Let them fight, I'll stand aside and look, trying one or the other and fixing bugs for the one I like the most.
In a year's time we'll probably have a winner... or, let them be two years.
The problem does not lie in the mechanism itself - it's in the documentation - or the lack of understandable (or at least often-used) docs directly at the source.
Simple caching on client side could already improve the situation a whole lot... BUT:
When people implement something for html-ish or svg-ish or xml-ish purposes, they go google for it: "Howto XML blah foo" - result, they're getting basic screw-it-with-a-hammer tutorials that don't point out important design decisions, but instead Just Work - which is what the author wanted to achieve when they started writing the software.
It's a little bit like people still using ifconfig on Linux though it's been deprecated and superseded by iptables and iproute2. But since most tutorials and howtos on the net are just dumbed-down copypasta for quick and dirty hacks - and since nobody fucking enforces the standards - nobody does it the Right Way.
So if I start writing some sax-parser, some html-rendering lib, some silly scraper, whatnot... and the first example implementations only deal with basic stuff and show me how to do it so basic functionality can be implemented... and I'm not really interested in that part of the program anyways, because I need it for putting something more fancy on top... once after I'm through with the initial testing of this particular subsystem, I won't really care about anything else. It works, it doesn't seem to hit performance too badly, it's according to some random guy's completely irrelevant blog - hey, this guy knows what he's doing. I don't care!
This story hitting/.'s front page might actually help improve the situation. But.. it's like this with stupid programmers - they never die out, they'll always create problems. Let's get used to it.
OP.java:4: cannot find symbol symbol : variable customer location: class org.slashdot.it if (isCustomer(user) && accountSize(customer) > TenMillion)/* Thin the herd */ ^ 1 error
... how long until people actually want such an arm?
Seriously, I'm not trolling - I'm just trying to raise an interesting discussion (which, in some cases might be quite similar)...
Let's consider this: once cosmetic operations were not for the rich an famous to fulfill their goal of beauty (or not), but for repairing damage that might have occurred in an accident or through genetic failures. In the beginning any surgery performed on the human body was a correction.
Nowadays some people view it as an enhancement.
And who wouldn't like to have more strength in his arm, be able to type as fast as Data or maybe have a hard drive hooked up to his brain? Once the technology advances sufficiently, this could become commonplace... how long? Ten, twenty years?
What are the ethical and sociological implications? Is this already going to be the first step of realizing Transhumanism - just not exactly in the same way Nietzsche envisioned?
Discuss!
It's not that deeply connected to the southern/northern hemisphere thing. Really, even over here in Germany, participation in SoC is made quite hard by the fact that you'll just end up having less time because the program starts in May and ends in August. Well, my vacations start in the end of July and end in October. That means that it's almost impossible for me to take part in SoC because it has to happen during the summer semester - which, here in Germany, is shorter and therefore packed with a lot of work so the teachers can get through their material.
If the sums are that hefty, why aren't Hollywood doing it? Hollywood? Hollywood are making quite hefty sums from ads and everything else (though usually they'll ad for themselves). In fact, they are the ones that have the money to lobby the Swedish administration into suing the operators of one of the worlds most visited websites.
I was going to mod you 'Flamebait' for this blatant ignorance of yours, but then I thought we'd better have an argument about this.
You're talking about 'socialism' and 'communism'. Could you please, please, prettyplease explain to me why?? What the hell do you know about socialism? And why it failed? But did it fail? What exactly failed? Are you from a so-called 'socialist' country? Let me guess: you're from America, where everything that has the label 'commie' is evil, no matter why it has this label, and what it is, exactly. So, you don't like Bill Gates, he's suggesting something that reminds you of your shameless exploitation of the rest of the world and you start acting like a child.(orly? You don't exploit anyone? Then please count the number of things that have 'Made in X' on them, where X is a 3rd world country. And don't forget your clothes!)
It just rings that guilt in you, that shame you probably have if your brain isn't entirely dysfunctional: you're flushing your crap down the canalization with 20 liters of water while children are starving. And now that someone has said the unspeakable, you immediately go into your defensive position: 'commie', you scream. Citing that old and worn Churchill citation that doesn't take into account that for the majority (in numbers) of countries, capitalism doesn't yield any substantial improvement for their population, and in many cases it's worse.
True, we're living in the land of milk and honey, and capitalism has probably brought us there. But why are you so jealously defending your honey that everyone that suggests part of it being 'donated' to people that don't have anything seems to you like someone who is committing a crime against your way of living? Against your government?
So, if you really want to make a point, please tell me
1) how exactly does this bear any resemblance at all to 'communism'?
2) even if it were so, why is this automatically a Bad Thing?
PS: don't forget that without socialism you wouldn't have many of the rights you do have today. Especially worker's rights are an area where the socialist movements across Europe have achieved very, very much.
It doesn't have to be like that. Let's think of a system for the robots where helping each other would be more appealing than cheating on each other. I read this article once and was really amazed that nature itself has already invented altruism - in a very elegant - and, most important of all robust - manner.
It is an unfortunate man who counts another as an enemy--the more you hate 'em, the more you risk becoming like 'em. There's a German Proverb that goes: Die größten Kritiker der Elche waren früher selber welche
translates to: the greatest critics of the moose have been moose themselves in the past... (rhymes in German and is thus funny, sounds ridiculous in my translation)
I hope you understand my point. Been there, done that - not a hard liner, but a naïve child, ready to believe in something sound - then I turned away in disgust as my mind started liberating itself from all that Christian... propaganda?
I don't think I have a chance of becoming religious once again - and I think that you misunderstood my usage of 'enemy'. I don't hate them, but I must oppose them.
Yes it does. I must admit that my original comment was badly worded, but I mean it that way - not all Christians are complete retards, and I know some I really admire, but some of them, I know no better word than 'enemy' for them.
Are you just joking, or a complete nutjob? I assume it's the former, just for the sake of sanity.
Inhabitants of the EU: 494.8, Millions, that is. Way more than Kentucky. Way more than the US, actually. Over half of the households in Europe are actually using computers. That's one hell of a market, if you ask me. MS can't, just can't afford to lose that market. And it's not only about the numbers - the European market is very innovative, many software companies are producing - well... software. Imagine if their environment wouldn't mostly use Windows as its main OS?
Mercury has a dark side? Sort of. It was thought to be tidally locked, until they found out it rotates approx. thrice for every two revolutions around the sun. Mercury has quite a complex orbit, with mercurial days varying between 176 and 58.7 earthen days, as you can read up in Wikipedia
I'll wait for them things to get produced on a larger scale. I wonder when the first incident will be reported where a drunken farmer abuses his newly-grown exo-super powers...
Would be fun to have a fight in those things, too, I think. Just one blow that's not blocked properly and you're dead meat, ready for consumption.
... not only of a looming Helium shortage - just google for "Aluminum Shortage" and take a look at the results... many resources on earth are becoming more and more scarce while everybody seems to only concentrate on energy resources.
That, my friends is one of the best reasons for putting money into space exploration rather than wars for oil. We're still far from being able to actually mine anything that's not already on our planet, but we're not so far from a shortage in the critical resources that would make extraterrestrial retrieval of resources possible in the first place.
With Helium it's actually a matter of re-using what we have - gas recycling hasn't been much of an issue in the past, but people need to hear about it. And please don't throw 'statistical evidence' at me that suggests 'there is no crisis'. Even the potential crisis is enough to be worried about it, if the implications are that dramatic. Much of our economical and scientific growth currently depends on the reckless abuse of non-renewable (or non-renewed) resources. We don't want to break Moore's Law, do we?
I totally agree with you. Pilots have to be 100% sober, have no criminal records, good sight (without the use of glasses), and pass a billion other tests. Flying around in mid-air is not quite like driving on the road. You have to keep track of wind, other flying vehicles, obstacles - and you have virtually no guidance (like roads). And when you make a mistake, you loose hard. Not only you, in fact, but everyone around you, too.
Flying vehicles are too much of a risk to let them be guided by humans - you have to have some kind of computer controlled system that will mostly operate this thing for you while also keeping track of other vehicles.
There are ideas to bring this kind of design to the road, but they've not matured yet. When we're able to control conventional traffic fully via computer systems, we may start thinking of inventing something flyable. I imagine that, just like with the transition from horses to cars, those flying cars would initially be using conventional roads (perhaps adding another layer on top of them - so we could stack highways instead of ruining the landscape with 6 or 8 lanes of asphalt) and only later have some special 'air-roads' for themselves, when the idea becomes more dominant.
I don't think I'll ever be driving such a thing, but perhaps my kids?
I don't think it has much to do with hydrodynamics. You don't want your veins to explode, do you? So you're not likely to have two hearts that beat as fast as the original one heart -- instead you'll have two hearts beating half as many times per minute as to decrease the wear'n'tear on both of them and thus minimize the risk of an infarct and any other heart disease; while still maintaining the same amount of heartbeat overall. You would still have to figure out a control mechanism that is able to throttle both the hearts (and of course, keep them in sync - that's why it has at least a bit to do with hydrodynamics), but that's it.
I still think having two hearts is kind of pointless. Except for the 'double-safe-backup' thing. People that do a lot of sports or work in a stressful position would actually like that as it effectively is two life insurances in one: one backup and both do less work overall and are less likely to fail. Actually, that's quite nice.
Thanks very much for the replies, guys, but unfortunately my initial request was badly worded.
I didn't really want a.deb that much as I wanted a repo. So new versions of FF beta that crop out (which happens every now and then) would then automagically get updated with apt-get update & upgrade.
That's one of the features I like most about Linux (and FreeBSD, for that matter, though there it's a whole different story): not only is the installation of programs incredibly easy, but you can also keep everything up-to-date without having to bother about it yourself. Or have the apps phone home regularly to check for updates. Or worse: have the apps perform stealthy updates.:-)
I'll think about making my own repo then. But I'll need some server space...
No. I think diversity in Linux is a Good Thing. There are hundreds of distros out there and that's really good to see, because they're all competing with each other, sharing their work with each other, forking one another and then merging back... If a distro dies, ten new ones spawn. That's very good, it contributes to a diversity which makes the Linux community an interesting place to live in.
And that 'but it confuses the newbies' argument just doesn't cut it anymore. For the complete boons, there's Ubuntu and probably SuSE. For everyone else, there's choice. I like choice. Right now I chose Debian, but that has changed in the past and will probably change in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
http://hubblesite.org/reference_desk/faq/answer.php.id=45&cat=galaxies
Though I have no idea how exactly they did it this time. That's just the general procedure. According to TFA that's just an estimation and the exact age of the galaxy is yet to be determined; that's what those new telescopes would be useful for.
What's even more interesting though: The astronomers used a relatively nearby massive cluster of galaxies known as Abell 1689, roughly 2.2 billion light-years away, to magnify the light from the more distant galaxy directly behind it. This natural telescope is called a gravitational lens. Remember: when you're glancing through space, you're not only taking a look at the 3 space dimensions, but the 4th, time, actually starts playing a role. The sun could explode right now and we would only notice it in about 8 minutes...
There is no way Apple will agree on agreeing with anyone else - especially if it's some pesky open-source distributors or Sun, who are not in the desktop, but the server market (mostly). They are a) going to buy the stuff (cups, khtml) b) or completely ignore everyone else and roll their own, like they always did.
I don't say this is a bad thing - I'm rather trying to point out that the OP is wishful thinking. And to add to the list: Gentoo has several alternatives. Heck, there are two versions of their baselayout and you can use einit and initng (and maybe a third... I can't remember right now).
Let's face it: SystemVInit lies dead and rotten with a few people still clinging on to it, but more because of momentum than anything else. For one thing, it's awfully slow. When I moved my laptop from a tuned Gentoo (einit) to Debian I was really happy to know suspend is finally in the kernel - it would take forever to boot. Literally. About a minute! For a laptop, no services whatsoever (OK, save apache, nfsd and ntpd)
What's coming now are the Standards Wars. They've always been there (well, as long as there is more than one manufacturer) and they'll eventually settle. Nobody is going to use launchd except Apple, nobody is going to use SMF except Sun. *BSDs will hide behind sysV for a while - and Ubuntu is one of the early-adopters distro, always including the New Stuff - sometimes with catastrophic results (7.10 was a PITA), so they are the natural candidate for providing us with a new system - or at least a proposal therefor. And Gentoo... well, einit doesn't sound that bad. They've surely replaced the default framebuffer! uvesafb is a billion times better than vesafb-tng - and even that came from Spock (not the Vulcanian, a Gentoo dev). Let them fight, I'll stand aside and look, trying one or the other and fixing bugs for the one I like the most.
In a year's time we'll probably have a winner... or, let them be two years.
No, Vista is useless. Here's something that makes a lot more sense:
:-)
http://www.uniquepeek.com/viewpage.php?page_id=1517
The problem does not lie in the mechanism itself - it's in the documentation - or the lack of understandable (or at least often-used) docs directly at the source.
/.'s front page might actually help improve the situation. But.. it's like this with stupid programmers - they never die out, they'll always create problems. Let's get used to it.
Simple caching on client side could already improve the situation a whole lot... BUT:
When people implement something for html-ish or svg-ish or xml-ish purposes, they go google for it: "Howto XML blah foo" - result, they're getting basic screw-it-with-a-hammer tutorials that don't point out important design decisions, but instead Just Work - which is what the author wanted to achieve when they started writing the software.
It's a little bit like people still using ifconfig on Linux though it's been deprecated and superseded by iptables and iproute2. But since most tutorials and howtos on the net are just dumbed-down copypasta for quick and dirty hacks - and since nobody fucking enforces the standards - nobody does it the Right Way.
So if I start writing some sax-parser, some html-rendering lib, some silly scraper, whatnot... and the first example implementations only deal with basic stuff and show me how to do it so basic functionality can be implemented... and I'm not really interested in that part of the program anyways, because I need it for putting something more fancy on top... once after I'm through with the initial testing of this particular subsystem, I won't really care about anything else. It works, it doesn't seem to hit performance too badly, it's according to some random guy's completely irrelevant blog - hey, this guy knows what he's doing. I don't care!
This story hitting
Let's welcome our new Beowulf Cluster of legal troll-overlords...
... the wave! The wave is coming, I can see it... heck, the earth is shaking!
And that, my friends, is *exactly* why Open Source is so successful and important.
Now let's go manufacturing open source hardware...
... how long until people actually want such an arm?
Seriously, I'm not trolling - I'm just trying to raise an interesting discussion (which, in some cases might be quite similar)...
Let's consider this: once cosmetic operations were not for the rich an famous to fulfill their goal of beauty (or not), but for repairing damage that might have occurred in an accident or through genetic failures. In the beginning any surgery performed on the human body was a correction.
Nowadays some people view it as an enhancement.
And who wouldn't like to have more strength in his arm, be able to type as fast as Data or maybe have a hard drive hooked up to his brain? Once the technology advances sufficiently, this could become commonplace... how long? Ten, twenty years?
What are the ethical and sociological implications? Is this already going to be the first step of realizing Transhumanism - just not exactly in the same way Nietzsche envisioned? Discuss!
It's not that deeply connected to the southern/northern hemisphere thing. Really, even over here in Germany, participation in SoC is made quite hard by the fact that you'll just end up having less time because the program starts in May and ends in August. Well, my vacations start in the end of July and end in October. That means that it's almost impossible for me to take part in SoC because it has to happen during the summer semester - which, here in Germany, is shorter and therefore packed with a lot of work so the teachers can get through their material.
I was going to mod you 'Flamebait' for this blatant ignorance of yours, but then I thought we'd better have an argument about this.
You're talking about 'socialism' and 'communism'. Could you please, please, prettyplease explain to me why?? What the hell do you know about socialism? And why it failed? But did it fail? What exactly failed? Are you from a so-called 'socialist' country? Let me guess: you're from America, where everything that has the label 'commie' is evil, no matter why it has this label, and what it is, exactly. So, you don't like Bill Gates, he's suggesting something that reminds you of your shameless exploitation of the rest of the world and you start acting like a child.(orly? You don't exploit anyone? Then please count the number of things that have 'Made in X' on them, where X is a 3rd world country. And don't forget your clothes!)
It just rings that guilt in you, that shame you probably have if your brain isn't entirely dysfunctional: you're flushing your crap down the canalization with 20 liters of water while children are starving. And now that someone has said the unspeakable, you immediately go into your defensive position: 'commie', you scream. Citing that old and worn Churchill citation that doesn't take into account that for the majority (in numbers) of countries, capitalism doesn't yield any substantial improvement for their population, and in many cases it's worse.
True, we're living in the land of milk and honey, and capitalism has probably brought us there. But why are you so jealously defending your honey that everyone that suggests part of it being 'donated' to people that don't have anything seems to you like someone who is committing a crime against your way of living? Against your government?
So, if you really want to make a point, please tell me
1) how exactly does this bear any resemblance at all to 'communism'?
2) even if it were so, why is this automatically a Bad Thing?
PS: don't forget that without socialism you wouldn't have many of the rights you do have today. Especially worker's rights are an area where the socialist movements across Europe have achieved very, very much.
It doesn't have to be like that. Let's think of a system for the robots where helping each other would be more appealing than cheating on each other. I read this article once and was really amazed that nature itself has already invented altruism - in a very elegant - and, most important of all robust - manner.
... even bricks phone home.
Die größten Kritiker der Elche waren früher selber welche
translates to: the greatest critics of the moose have been moose themselves in the past... (rhymes in German and is thus funny, sounds ridiculous in my translation)
I hope you understand my point. Been there, done that - not a hard liner, but a naïve child, ready to believe in something sound - then I turned away in disgust as my mind started liberating itself from all that Christian... propaganda?
I don't think I have a chance of becoming religious once again - and I think that you misunderstood my usage of 'enemy'. I don't hate them, but I must oppose them.
Yes it does. I must admit that my original comment was badly worded, but I mean it that way - not all Christians are complete retards, and I know some I really admire, but some of them, I know no better word than 'enemy' for them.
Trying to argument by calling things "merely the way they are" is what I hate my Christian enemies for.
Not only them, but the mods, too. Tough luck, boy... ;-)
I was just looking for an opportunity to put them figures in here - you know, Karma and such
(That was funny. Laugh)
Orly?
Are you just joking, or a complete nutjob? I assume it's the former, just for the sake of sanity.
Inhabitants of the EU: 494.8, Millions, that is. Way more than Kentucky. Way more than the US, actually. Over half of the households in Europe are actually using computers. That's one hell of a market, if you ask me. MS can't, just can't afford to lose that market. And it's not only about the numbers - the European market is very innovative, many software companies are producing - well... software. Imagine if their environment wouldn't mostly use Windows as its main OS?
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_statistics
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90781/90877/6314195.html
I'll wait for them things to get produced on a larger scale. I wonder when the first incident will be reported where a drunken farmer abuses his newly-grown exo-super powers...
Would be fun to have a fight in those things, too, I think. Just one blow that's not blocked properly and you're dead meat, ready for consumption.
... not only of a looming Helium shortage - just google for "Aluminum Shortage" and take a look at the results... many resources on earth are becoming more and more scarce while everybody seems to only concentrate on energy resources.
That, my friends is one of the best reasons for putting money into space exploration rather than wars for oil. We're still far from being able to actually mine anything that's not already on our planet, but we're not so far from a shortage in the critical resources that would make extraterrestrial retrieval of resources possible in the first place.
With Helium it's actually a matter of re-using what we have - gas recycling hasn't been much of an issue in the past, but people need to hear about it. And please don't throw 'statistical evidence' at me that suggests 'there is no crisis'. Even the potential crisis is enough to be worried about it, if the implications are that dramatic. Much of our economical and scientific growth currently depends on the reckless abuse of non-renewable (or non-renewed) resources. We don't want to break Moore's Law, do we?
I totally agree with you. Pilots have to be 100% sober, have no criminal records, good sight (without the use of glasses), and pass a billion other tests. Flying around in mid-air is not quite like driving on the road. You have to keep track of wind, other flying vehicles, obstacles - and you have virtually no guidance (like roads). And when you make a mistake, you loose hard. Not only you, in fact, but everyone around you, too.
Flying vehicles are too much of a risk to let them be guided by humans - you have to have some kind of computer controlled system that will mostly operate this thing for you while also keeping track of other vehicles.
There are ideas to bring this kind of design to the road, but they've not matured yet. When we're able to control conventional traffic fully via computer systems, we may start thinking of inventing something flyable. I imagine that, just like with the transition from horses to cars, those flying cars would initially be using conventional roads (perhaps adding another layer on top of them - so we could stack highways instead of ruining the landscape with 6 or 8 lanes of asphalt) and only later have some special 'air-roads' for themselves, when the idea becomes more dominant.
I don't think I'll ever be driving such a thing, but perhaps my kids?
I don't think it has much to do with hydrodynamics. You don't want your veins to explode, do you? So you're not likely to have two hearts that beat as fast as the original one heart -- instead you'll have two hearts beating half as many times per minute as to decrease the wear'n'tear on both of them and thus minimize the risk of an infarct and any other heart disease; while still maintaining the same amount of heartbeat overall. You would still have to figure out a control mechanism that is able to throttle both the hearts (and of course, keep them in sync - that's why it has at least a bit to do with hydrodynamics), but that's it.
I still think having two hearts is kind of pointless. Except for the 'double-safe-backup' thing. People that do a lot of sports or work in a stressful position would actually like that as it effectively is two life insurances in one: one backup and both do less work overall and are less likely to fail. Actually, that's quite nice.
Thanks very much for the replies, guys, but unfortunately my initial request was badly worded.
.deb that much as I wanted a repo. So new versions of FF beta that crop out (which happens every now and then) would then automagically get updated with apt-get update & upgrade.
:-)
I didn't really want a
That's one of the features I like most about Linux (and FreeBSD, for that matter, though there it's a whole different story): not only is the installation of programs incredibly easy, but you can also keep everything up-to-date without having to bother about it yourself. Or have the apps phone home regularly to check for updates. Or worse: have the apps perform stealthy updates.
I'll think about making my own repo then. But I'll need some server space...
No. I think diversity in Linux is a Good Thing. There are hundreds of distros out there and that's really good to see, because they're all competing with each other, sharing their work with each other, forking one another and then merging back... If a distro dies, ten new ones spawn. That's very good, it contributes to a diversity which makes the Linux community an interesting place to live in.
... as long as it's not RPM-based...
And that 'but it confuses the newbies' argument just doesn't cut it anymore. For the complete boons, there's Ubuntu and probably SuSE. For everyone else, there's choice. I like choice. Right now I chose Debian, but that has changed in the past and will probably change in the future.