I'll take that as a "I took the quiz but didn't get a perfect score";-)
C has so much undefined behaviour it's not even funny. Of course in some instances it's nice because it allows more aggressive optimization by the compiler, but most of the time it just makes it easier to shoot yourself in the foot.
That trick is only guaranteed to work if N is a power of two. It's much better to just use mod and let the compiler figure out how to optimize, lest you run into mysterious bugs when someone changes N.
Because it will *hurt*. You still need to breathe out to get rid of carbon dioxide. It is not lack of oxygen, but build-up of CO2 that makes you feel like you need to breathe. Don't breathe out long enough and you'll find the pH of your blood going down, which is not very healthy. I imagine having these oxygen injections without breathing will feel a lot like asphyxiation, except that instead of passing out in 3 or 4 minutes, the experience will last 15 minutes.
Also, as mentioned in the article, these microparticles don't magically disappear so you can't keep adding them indefinitely.
> I will be the first guy on mars, women will be begging to use my seed here on earth
What makes you say that? Somehow I doubt that 'lives on another planet, never to return' is a quality that people find attractive in a mate, nor does it in any way suggest you have good genes.
> How threatened would you feel from the possibility of this proposed array being hijacked by extremely depraved individuals, ones capable or guilty of great crimes? Not very. And if the array can be abused, wouldn't anyone who has control of the array be capable of great crimes by definition? Come on, if you're going to spread FUD at least put some effort in it. Mention China or Communism or Muslims. I feel scared already.
> And, are you not glad that now someone has published a paper on it, so Megacorp cannot 'patent' this Earth-saving idea?" There isn't any money to be made here. Getting those lasers in orbit is very expensive, and once they're up there you can't go the 'pay up or else!'-route because the world will simply give you the finger and impound your stuff. Why any company would want to patent this idea is beyond me.
It just struck me that the robot should just kill all humans. After such blatant disregard of the poor robot's safety, they deserve it. If the robots knows no way to escape the facility, perhaps it should grab the bomb and take it to the experimenters and demand to be released, or else!
Humans are like Version 3, except we use experience and correlations to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant. Since humans have several years of real-world interaction before running into your 'problem', it seems fair to grant Robot V3 several years of real-world interaction (which must include the concept of a time-bomb and wheels) to give it a chance to populate its tables rather than just dropping it in that situation without any prior experience and knowledge and expecting it to succeed. An infant would fail your test too, because just like the robot it has no specific instructions about its environment (well, that's not even true, it has the benefit of a predefined set of heuristics in the form of instincts and reflexes).
One could easily create an open source license that forbids use of the software by the military and/or as part of any device/system intended for use in battle/war/whatever.
> Are you saying we shouldn't investigate because the simplest answer is good enough? Depending on how you define 'good enough': yes.
> Yes, astrobiology;-) Not exclusively I hope? Considering it's rather expensive to go into space, perhaps we should primarily focus on the (comparatively cheaper to research) option of life originating on earth?
> Wouldn't you consider the possibility of answers to some of life’s most fundamental questions inspirational? People have been inspired without the answers to those questions for thousands of years. While it would be nice to know about the origin of life, I strongly doubt it will significantly influence inspiration one way or the other. I also don't think funding NASA is the most effective way to get these answers.
> any logical theory is as valid as another in the absence of evidence. Not a fan of Occam's razor, are we?
> There are many questions, and that's why Neil deGrasse Tyson is arguing for a bigger space program. We'd like answers. If you want to know more about the origin of life, try investing in biology, not NASA. Besides, it looks like Neil is arguing for a bigger space program not to answer questions, but to inspire 'dreams' and innovation and promises of a more successful economy.
"Don't laugh at me, I'm not a nutter! I didn't mean god, I was referring to aliens!";-)
Even if we assume the origin of life is extraterrestrial, there is no reason to believe any intelligence or intent was involved. And extraterrestrial life must still have spontaneously formed somewhere. Knowing that life can spontaneously form, doesn't the explanation that does not involve interstellar travel seem more likely?
> The two theories diverge when it comes to the ultimate source of life which Natural Selection says evolved spontaneously as a single cell life form from which all other life evolved Actually evolution and natural selection do not attempt to explain the origin of life. If that's something you're interested in, try looking up abiogenesis.
> and ID suggesting that our DNA may have come from elsewhere. So it doesn't make any attempt to explain the origin of life and just moves the problem to some undefined 'elsewhere'?
> It seems to me that expanding the exploration of space is key to discoving where we come from and the answer may be something which would be considered very unscientific at this point in time. Please give us your motivations for this belief.
> or prove there is none Impossible to prove. Even if we could visit every location in the universe to see if aliens live there, they may have gone extinct without leaving any trace.
> and that under the right conditions life can evolve spontaneously in a previously sterile environment it would be short sighted to deny that life may have originated elsewhere. 1) We know the universe has a finite age of give or take 14 billion years. 2) We also know that no DNA from 'before' the big bang could have made it into this universe for the simple reason that early conditions were incompatible with the existence of molecules. 3) We know life exists now. It seems to me that based on 1, 2, and 3 we have to conclude that life *must* have formed in a previously sterile environment *somewhere* at *some* point during the last 14 billion years. Attempting to explain the origin of life by introducing an (intelligent) agent only moves the problem to the origin of that agent.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll take that as a "I took the quiz but didn't get a perfect score" ;-)
C has so much undefined behaviour it's not even funny. Of course in some instances it's nice because it allows more aggressive optimization by the compiler, but most of the time it just makes it easier to shoot yourself in the foot.
Oh I know this one! Is the answer: "Being unable to access the carry flag" ?
If C is volatile and changed by a different thread, your statement might actually evaluate as false.
If only it compiled at the same speed as assembly...
C, predictable? Would you mind taking this http://blog.regehr.org/archives/721 quiz? It's about the predictability of integers in C.
That trick is only guaranteed to work if N is a power of two. It's much better to just use mod and let the compiler figure out how to optimize, lest you run into mysterious bugs when someone changes N.
If you are using oxygen then you are not in suspended animation and you will age. Also good luck accumulating a thousand years of CO2 in your blood.
Because it will *hurt*. You still need to breathe out to get rid of carbon dioxide. It is not lack of oxygen, but build-up of CO2 that makes you feel like you need to breathe. Don't breathe out long enough and you'll find the pH of your blood going down, which is not very healthy. I imagine having these oxygen injections without breathing will feel a lot like asphyxiation, except that instead of passing out in 3 or 4 minutes, the experience will last 15 minutes.
Also, as mentioned in the article, these microparticles don't magically disappear so you can't keep adding them indefinitely.
> I will be the first guy on mars, women will be begging to use my seed here on earth
What makes you say that? Somehow I doubt that 'lives on another planet, never to return' is a quality that people find attractive in a mate, nor does it in any way suggest you have good genes.
> i just hope they give them some ganja seeds too (and at the go to see if it grows outside - being a damn resilient plant)
It wouldn't.
Plants require either (liquid) water or an atmosphere to perform photosynthesis. Mars has neither, so dumping seeds 'outside' is completely pointless.
> How threatened would you feel from the possibility of this proposed array being hijacked by extremely depraved individuals, ones capable or guilty of great crimes?
Not very. And if the array can be abused, wouldn't anyone who has control of the array be capable of great crimes by definition? Come on, if you're going to spread FUD at least put some effort in it. Mention China or Communism or Muslims. I feel scared already.
> And, are you not glad that now someone has published a paper on it, so Megacorp cannot 'patent' this Earth-saving idea?"
There isn't any money to be made here. Getting those lasers in orbit is very expensive, and once they're up there you can't go the 'pay up or else!'-route because the world will simply give you the finger and impound your stuff. Why any company would want to patent this idea is beyond me.
That seems like a rather meaningless definition of 'value'.
It just struck me that the robot should just kill all humans. After such blatant disregard of the poor robot's safety, they deserve it. If the robots knows no way to escape the facility, perhaps it should grab the bomb and take it to the experimenters and demand to be released, or else!
Humans are like Version 3, except we use experience and correlations to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant. Since humans have several years of real-world interaction before running into your 'problem', it seems fair to grant Robot V3 several years of real-world interaction (which must include the concept of a time-bomb and wheels) to give it a chance to populate its tables rather than just dropping it in that situation without any prior experience and knowledge and expecting it to succeed. An infant would fail your test too, because just like the robot it has no specific instructions about its environment (well, that's not even true, it has the benefit of a predefined set of heuristics in the form of instincts and reflexes).
Can you prove that your speech is yours and not just algorithmically derived from something you've heard or read?
Using brute force? On a conventional computer it would require more energy than is available in our galaxy. You can't even count up to 2^256.
That only seems relevant if one wants the license to be recognized by OSI. I can't think of a reason why anyone would consider that important.
One could easily create an open source license that forbids use of the software by the military and/or as part of any device/system intended for use in battle/war/whatever.
> Are you saying we shouldn't investigate because the simplest answer is good enough?
Depending on how you define 'good enough': yes.
> Yes, astrobiology ;-)
Not exclusively I hope? Considering it's rather expensive to go into space, perhaps we should primarily focus on the (comparatively cheaper to research) option of life originating on earth?
> Wouldn't you consider the possibility of answers to some of life’s most fundamental questions inspirational?
People have been inspired without the answers to those questions for thousands of years. While it would be nice to know about the origin of life, I strongly doubt it will significantly influence inspiration one way or the other. I also don't think funding NASA is the most effective way to get these answers.
> any logical theory is as valid as another in the absence of evidence.
Not a fan of Occam's razor, are we?
> There are many questions, and that's why Neil deGrasse Tyson is arguing for a bigger space program. We'd like answers.
If you want to know more about the origin of life, try investing in biology, not NASA. Besides, it looks like Neil is arguing for a bigger space program not to answer questions, but to inspire 'dreams' and innovation and promises of a more successful economy.
"Don't laugh at me, I'm not a nutter! I didn't mean god, I was referring to aliens!" ;-)
Even if we assume the origin of life is extraterrestrial, there is no reason to believe any intelligence or intent was involved. And extraterrestrial life must still have spontaneously formed somewhere. Knowing that life can spontaneously form, doesn't the explanation that does not involve interstellar travel seem more likely?
> The two theories diverge when it comes to the ultimate source of life which Natural Selection says evolved spontaneously as a single cell life form from which all other life evolved
Actually evolution and natural selection do not attempt to explain the origin of life. If that's something you're interested in, try looking up abiogenesis.
> and ID suggesting that our DNA may have come from elsewhere.
So it doesn't make any attempt to explain the origin of life and just moves the problem to some undefined 'elsewhere'?
> It seems to me that expanding the exploration of space is key to discoving where we come from and the answer may be something which would be considered very unscientific at this point in time.
Please give us your motivations for this belief.
> or prove there is none
Impossible to prove. Even if we could visit every location in the universe to see if aliens live there, they may have gone extinct without leaving any trace.
> and that under the right conditions life can evolve spontaneously in a previously sterile environment it would be short sighted to deny that life may have originated elsewhere.
1) We know the universe has a finite age of give or take 14 billion years.
2) We also know that no DNA from 'before' the big bang could have made it into this universe for the simple reason that early conditions were incompatible with the existence of molecules.
3) We know life exists now.
It seems to me that based on 1, 2, and 3 we have to conclude that life *must* have formed in a previously sterile environment *somewhere* at *some* point during the last 14 billion years. Attempting to explain the origin of life by introducing an (intelligent) agent only moves the problem to the origin of that agent.
Because they would lose.
> The singularity itself? A teaspoon of singularities would have infinite weight.
No, it wouldn't. Black holes have a finite weight.