The problem is that the mass goes up as the speed nears the speed of light, and will be infinite at the speed of light. It takes an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an infinite mass, and you cannot have an infinite amount of energy.
Yes, but once your pole is moving at the speed of light [heh], you aren't attempting to accelerate it any longer.
Also, once it's at the speed of light and has infinite mass, it therefore has infinite inertia and will continue to move at the speed of light forever. If I'm sadly mistaken, someone please explain to me why.
It's flawed cause when you bring in an analogy, the argument turns from the original topic and becomes a discussion about the analogy's validity.
If I say "Metallica taking action against their fans on Napster is like the Chinese government shooting its own citizens in Tiananmen", then the discussion usually ceases to be about Metallica and becomes about the validity of my analogy. If my position isn't sound, I welcome this. If my position is sound, then my opponent seizes the opportunity to change the discussion.
Either way it accomplishes zero. Analogies are great for explaining complex ideas. They suck for debate, unless you're a demagogue.
There is nothing inherently illegal about MP3's, or copying them, or even sharing them - but you can't say that downloading music you haven't paid for is any more correct or moral than taping a CD borrowed from a friend. Most everybody does it, but it's not right, fair to the artist, or legal. [Emphasis added.]
Time for a reality check.
No, it's not legal. Whether it's not right, or not fair to the artist... now that's an entirely different matter. I hold that it's right and honorable for one to disobey a law that one feels is unfair. I hold that illegal MP3 exchange is no less fair to the artist than the record industry's reprehensible practice is fair to the consumer.
The first is a matter of public record, but the second and third are ethical matters. Each person is still free to think for him/herself on those matters.
...but they do not have to get permission from the fans in the crowd.... This is just the other side to your imperfect analogy.
I find it amusing that the supposedly intelligent Slashdot crowd has KneeJerkUpModerated the preceding posts. Anyone with at least average intelligence knows that arguing through analogies is logically flawed, and is a cheap technique used to divert attention from the true subject.
Re:At the end of Ender's Shadow.....
on
New Ender Sequel
·
· Score: 1
Apparently Shadow of the Hegemon develops Achilles' character a bit more... he appears in one of the first five chapters. Peter had style, but Achilles, well, didn't. Perhaps that's the point... all our characters have IQs that are four st.devs away from the mean, while Achilles is just a thug with a 130 or so. Pure speculation on my part, though.
...but I had heard that this one will still be from Bean's perspective, but will follow Bean "shadowing" Peter...
Actually, Shadow of the Hegemon is supposedly from Petra's perspective. The first chapters seem to follow both Petra and Bean roughly equally, though, with one scene from Peter's POV. The technique of using correspondence from powerful figures to introduce each chapter is still used, to great effect IMO.
I loved Ender's Game. Speaker for the Dead was disappointing, not because it was a poor book, but because I expected more of the same. I read Xenocide, but haven't bothered with Children of the Mind yet. I still haven't found Ender's Shadow locally. No, I won't buy it from Amazon.
Point being, the sequels have a very different, late-Clarke feel to them. The difference between Rendevous with Rama and its sequels is similar, for those of you that have read Clarke's Rama books but not OSC's Ender ones. They're still recommended, but not as highly.
Re:At the end of Ender's Shadow.....
on
New Ender Sequel
·
· Score: 1
And we assume that three's some gigantic battle to occur between Bean and Achilles.
At least, for my money there had darn well BETTER be.
The first chapters of Shadow of the Hegemon point to the fact that there will be... Ender's commanders have been kidnapped and forced to strategize for Achilles, and Bean is the only one still free. What I want to know is if Bean will join forces with Peter, and whether Peter will use Bean and discard him like all the rest.
The key to Linux's success on the desktop is gaming.
OpenGL is key; the effective death of Glide is the best thing that's happened toward that goal. Another key is robust video card driver support. Consider the benefit for Linux and open source in general if GPL'd drivers for popular video cards were available that provided better functionality than the manufacturer's closed drivers.
Oh, when and if Linux takes off on the desktop because of gaming, I resolve to not cry "Who let all these gamers in!?"
Re:I always liked this idea...
on
Solving Chess?
·
· Score: 1
"Pawn to king's knight four. Mate in seventy-two."
Unless the guy's opponent has nerves of steel, that alone would freak him out enough for it to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
...All that is known is that the technique was perfected while still humanity still was confined to the cradle of the homeworld. The miraculous computers were used to solve problems once thought impossible, and the knowledge gained allowed us to spread throughout the galaxy, throughout the universe, and then throughout the multiverse.
Then came the War, and the secret was lost; the mysterious Machines on the homeworld were the only ones to survive the War, and all attempts at understanding the theory behind their operation had been futile. Intensive study revealed they were still working on a problem. Unable to determine the nature of the machines' task, the Scientist-Priests abandoned the Project of Understanding was after seven millenia. The Project's only real discovery came in its third century, when it was found that the heiroglyph on the Machines represented an ancient animal called a 'penguin'.
What are the Machines working on? The topic of discussion when young Scientist-Acolytes gathered often turned to the Machines, and speculation of their colossal task.
Then, one day, deep in the heart of the Machine Cluster on the all-but-forgitten homeworld, a terminal winked to life. Its cryptic output would be the subject of another hundred lifetimes' analysis, as it consisted of hundreds of 8x8 grids populated by six seperate symbols...
For power, an adaptor from car-DC to computer-AC is not terribly expensive.
Ironic that he's converting DC to AC to DC. It'd be more elegant to just condition the DC, but I don't know of any cheaper way to do it than with a cheapie PC power supply. *sigh*
Re:This may sound heretical...
on
Sim Plague
·
· Score: 1
The SimCity games were/are jewels; among the best games of all time, IMHO. I still play them on occasion, what? ten years after the fact?
SimEarth (anyone else remember that?) was very entertaining, but the novelty wore off. SimAnt was fun for a couple weeks, SimFarm was fun for a few days. Anyone else notice a trend?
I bought The Sims when it came out. (Yeah, I run Windows... well, the price was right, eh.) Once I got bored with the total-failure aspect (like in SimCity, you can only stand to watch a city burn for so long), I started trying to get my Sims to actually succeed in life. With Free Will on, they are amazingly lazy and irresponsible. With Free Will off, they require constant hand-holding... they'll wet themselves if not told to go to the john.
After about two hours, I was bored with the game, so I used the money cheat and played with using the game as an architecture/interior-decorating visualizer. That was fun for an hour, and then I was done with it all.
The problem with The Sims is that there's nothing to do in the game. Anyone who's played it will probably agree with me. Beyond the basic choices of grubby-bachelor or sophisticated-businesswoman, and green or blue carpet, all you can really do is watch. That got old.
Every other Maxis game I've played, I've felt like there was always more I could have done with it. Not The Sims. I felt like I had exhausted its potential in three hours.
Of course, if you're just playing games under Windows and don't care about uptime so long as SystemUptime > DeathmatchTime, you could buy one of the new Celeron 600s or 633s, once they become more widely available. They're multiplier-locked at 9.0x and 9.5x respectively, but their 66MHz buses can be easily increased to 83MHz, 95MHz, or higher. The resulting clock speeds are left as an exercise for the reader. *grin*
The gaming benchmarks I've seen show a 1000MHz Celeron performing about the same as an 833MHz CuMine, all other controllable variables being equal.
Actually, the reason for the K6-III's disappearance is that AMD couldn't get any more clock out of the.25 micron process. K6-IIIs are only available clocked at 400MHz and 450MHz for a reason. The newer.18 micron K6-2s are essentially K6-IIIs renamed for marketing reasons (the relative success of the older K6-2s and the relative failure of the K6-IIIs).
Tyan makes a couple motherboards (the Trinity 371 and the Trinity 400) that have both Slots 1 and Sockets 370 on the same board, giving you freedom of choice between Intel and upcoming Cyrix solutions. Granted, it's not much, but it's there.
Disclaimers: Yes, I realize this is semi-offtopic. I have no personal financial interest in Tyan whatsoever.
...though that may just be my ignorance about what the parts cost. $89 also seems like a marketroid price point rather than the actual cost. If they were selling this thing at their actual cost, I'd be more inclined to accept $86.42 than $89.
All you law experts out there... (if there are any, heh)
Does Mattel even have the legal right to take these actions? Absurd doesn't even begin to describe it. Obviously IANAL, so I can't say this with authority, but since when is cracking a proprietary non-governmental encryption scheme illegal?
He's not asking how he can get the administration to switch from NT or whatever to Linux. He's asking how he can "...convince the faculty to include a unit of Linux, or free software, in the course."
I'd say the place to start would be with that teacher, if you think she'd listen to you and be open to the idea. If not, is there a "computing department" or some such? Where there's a department, there's a department head. Have a talk with whoever you go to about why the Linux phenomenon and the ideals of free software need to be discussed in a SD class. If you present your case well and they're a decent educator, they'll see the value in making an addition to the curriculum. Offer to help in any way you can.
Dealing with a high school has the possibility to be one of the most frustrating experiences you can have, but any HS that was forward-thinking enough to offer a SD class (most don't) might listen to reason. If not, perservere. If all else fails, all you can do is be sure you don't wind up at a university which has the same attitude. And good luck!
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I read Ender's Game too.
Yes, but once your pole is moving at the speed of light [heh], you aren't attempting to accelerate it any longer.
Also, once it's at the speed of light and has infinite mass, it therefore has infinite inertia and will continue to move at the speed of light forever. If I'm sadly mistaken, someone please explain to me why.
It's flawed cause when you bring in an analogy, the argument turns from the original topic and becomes a discussion about the analogy's validity.
If I say "Metallica taking action against their fans on Napster is like the Chinese government shooting its own citizens in Tiananmen", then the discussion usually ceases to be about Metallica and becomes about the validity of my analogy. If my position isn't sound, I welcome this. If my position is sound, then my opponent seizes the opportunity to change the discussion.
Either way it accomplishes zero. Analogies are great for explaining complex ideas. They suck for debate, unless you're a demagogue.
Time for a reality check.
No, it's not legal. Whether it's not right, or not fair to the artist... now that's an entirely different matter. I hold that it's right and honorable for one to disobey a law that one feels is unfair. I hold that illegal MP3 exchange is no less fair to the artist than the record industry's reprehensible practice is fair to the consumer.
The first is a matter of public record, but the second and third are ethical matters. Each person is still free to think for him/herself on those matters.
I find it amusing that the supposedly intelligent Slashdot crowd has KneeJerkUpModerated the preceding posts. Anyone with at least average intelligence knows that arguing through analogies is logically flawed, and is a cheap technique used to divert attention from the true subject.
Apparently Shadow of the Hegemon develops Achilles' character a bit more... he appears in one of the first five chapters. Peter had style, but Achilles, well, didn't. Perhaps that's the point... all our characters have IQs that are four st.devs away from the mean, while Achilles is just a thug with a 130 or so. Pure speculation on my part, though.
Most meatspace bookstores stock Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind, but not Ender's Shadow... what's up with that?
Most SF books, including the Ender series, can be viewed as "possible historical accounts", so why not tie up some loose ends? What's it cost you?
Actually, Shadow of the Hegemon is supposedly from Petra's perspective. The first chapters seem to follow both Petra and Bean roughly equally, though, with one scene from Peter's POV. The technique of using correspondence from powerful figures to introduce each chapter is still used, to great effect IMO.
I loved Ender's Game. Speaker for the Dead was disappointing, not because it was a poor book, but because I expected more of the same. I read Xenocide, but haven't bothered with Children of the Mind yet. I still haven't found Ender's Shadow locally. No, I won't buy it from Amazon.
Point being, the sequels have a very different, late-Clarke feel to them. The difference between Rendevous with Rama and its sequels is similar, for those of you that have read Clarke's Rama books but not OSC's Ender ones. They're still recommended, but not as highly.
At least, for my money there had darn well BETTER be.
The first chapters of Shadow of the Hegemon point to the fact that there will be... Ender's commanders have been kidnapped and forced to strategize for Achilles, and Bean is the only one still free. What I want to know is if Bean will join forces with Peter, and whether Peter will use Bean and discard him like all the rest.
OpenGL is key; the effective death of Glide is the best thing that's happened toward that goal. Another key is robust video card driver support. Consider the benefit for Linux and open source in general if GPL'd drivers for popular video cards were available that provided better functionality than the manufacturer's closed drivers.
Oh, when and if Linux takes off on the desktop because of gaming, I resolve to not cry "Who let all these gamers in!?"
Unless the guy's opponent has nerves of steel, that alone would freak him out enough for it to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
What are you playing it on? A Z80? Come to think of it, a Z80 port of Linux would be a neat trick... "Screw TI-Basic, I use gcc on my calculator."
Then came the War, and the secret was lost; the mysterious Machines on the homeworld were the only ones to survive the War, and all attempts at understanding the theory behind their operation had been futile. Intensive study revealed they were still working on a problem. Unable to determine the nature of the machines' task, the Scientist-Priests abandoned the Project of Understanding was after seven millenia. The Project's only real discovery came in its third century, when it was found that the heiroglyph on the Machines represented an ancient animal called a 'penguin'.
What are the Machines working on? The topic of discussion when young Scientist-Acolytes gathered often turned to the Machines, and speculation of their colossal task.
Then, one day, deep in the heart of the Machine Cluster on the all-but-forgitten homeworld, a terminal winked to life. Its cryptic output would be the subject of another hundred lifetimes' analysis, as it consisted of hundreds of 8x8 grids populated by six seperate symbols...
Ironic that he's converting DC to AC to DC. It'd be more elegant to just condition the DC, but I don't know of any cheaper way to do it than with a cheapie PC power supply. *sigh*
SimEarth (anyone else remember that?) was very entertaining, but the novelty wore off. SimAnt was fun for a couple weeks, SimFarm was fun for a few days. Anyone else notice a trend?
I bought The Sims when it came out. (Yeah, I run Windows... well, the price was right, eh.) Once I got bored with the total-failure aspect (like in SimCity, you can only stand to watch a city burn for so long), I started trying to get my Sims to actually succeed in life. With Free Will on, they are amazingly lazy and irresponsible. With Free Will off, they require constant hand-holding... they'll wet themselves if not told to go to the john.
After about two hours, I was bored with the game, so I used the money cheat and played with using the game as an architecture/interior-decorating visualizer. That was fun for an hour, and then I was done with it all.
The problem with The Sims is that there's nothing to do in the game. Anyone who's played it will probably agree with me. Beyond the basic choices of grubby-bachelor or sophisticated-businesswoman, and green or blue carpet, all you can really do is watch. That got old.
Every other Maxis game I've played, I've felt like there was always more I could have done with it. Not The Sims. I felt like I had exhausted its potential in three hours.
YMMV.
I stand corrected.
The gaming benchmarks I've seen show a 1000MHz Celeron performing about the same as an 833MHz CuMine, all other controllable variables being equal.
IIRC.
Disclaimers:
Yes, I realize this is semi-offtopic.
I have no personal financial interest in Tyan whatsoever.
...though that may just be my ignorance about what the parts cost.
$89 also seems like a marketroid price point rather than the actual cost. If they were selling this thing at their actual cost, I'd be more inclined to accept $86.42 than $89.
Yeah, I read Jurassic Park too.
*grin*
Does Mattel even have the legal right to take these actions? Absurd doesn't even begin to describe it. Obviously IANAL, so I can't say this with authority, but since when is cracking a proprietary non-governmental encryption scheme illegal?
Someone help me out here.
Yeah, I saw Good Will Hunting too. =)
...not the one you want to be asked.
He's not asking how he can get the administration to switch from NT or whatever to Linux. He's asking how he can "...convince the faculty to include a unit of Linux, or free software, in the course."
I'd say the place to start would be with that teacher, if you think she'd listen to you and be open to the idea. If not, is there a "computing department" or some such? Where there's a department, there's a department head. Have a talk with whoever you go to about why the Linux phenomenon and the ideals of free software need to be discussed in a SD class. If you present your case well and they're a decent educator, they'll see the value in making an addition to the curriculum. Offer to help in any way you can.
Dealing with a high school has the possibility to be one of the most frustrating experiences you can have, but any HS that was forward-thinking enough to offer a SD class (most don't) might listen to reason. If not, perservere. If all else fails, all you can do is be sure you don't wind up at a university which has the same attitude. And good luck!