But you do need enough pressure to actually move the blood _up_. Unless you're saying the dinosaurs lowered their heads to allow blood movement, then only stick their heads up when necessary.
A theory of mine is that long necked dinosaurs had auxiliary hearts in their necks - so the chest heart only needs to pump part of the way up, the neck heart(s) takes care of the other part. To me that would make more sense than a single massive chest heart with enough pressure to pump all the way. But since soft tissue isn't well preserved/fossilized, it's going to be hard to get evidence. As it is there are very few fossilized dinosaur hearts found, and I doubt anybody is looking for heart like stuff in the neck area.
Some dinosaurs already had auxiliary brains - nerve impulses take rather long to travel all the way from the tail to the head. So why not extra hearts?
While I do tend to refer to them as US citizens, the term "American" is not ambiguous.
After all the Brazilians usuallly call themselves Brazilians and not Americans. The Canadians would agree they're technically Americans, but they'd rather avoid the term and stick to being called Canadians. Same goes for the other countries.
Who else in the world would call themselves Americans? The people of the USA that's who. The ones who would hold a "world series" where the rest of the world doesn't show up. Or have an International Code Council that's not actually international, that creates an "International Building Code" that isn't, etc.
At least they've stuck to calling themselves "Americans" - would be a bit confusing if they enlarged their claim.
For a lot of things it's the "top few" that make the difference. Being the top 2000th tennis player doesn't count for that much. I doubt the top 2000th mathematician in the world is going to advance the field of mathematics that much.
So I would be interested to see if the extreme top women in math can really match the extreme top men, and how many of that level are there.
The study doesn't really show this. I don't recall many math geniuses who do the "great stuff" going for math competitions. PhDs don't really prove that much either.
FWIW a female professor in China and her team have done pretty good work finding flaws in MD5 and SHA1. That's the sort of data point I'd find relevant. A significant advance in the field (and a headache to others;) ).
10 square metres of oil palm produces 1 litre of vegetable oil per year.
So let's say 3650 square metres to produce 1 litre per day.
A similar size area (in suitable climate) should be able to produce 4 tons of bananas per year (assuming no petro-fertilizers etc). That's about 9800kcal per day (assuming 90kcal/100g bananas). Keep a few chickens around for protein, grow stuff under the banana trees, maybe have a small fish pond.
They might do OK till someone kicks them off for a biofuel plantation...
Depends on how good the eyes are;). If we have really good eyes, we might spend less energy on lighting...
Seriously though, if the eyes are good, it could become practical for people to add an "aux video in" (or two). That could dramatically change things more than high capacity batteries.
Why bother with energy guzzling LCDs for laptops if you can just strap on a small brick computer (iBrain?;) ) and have the display appear in your mind. Then you can send the image(s) straight to someone else. Virtual telepathy! Hope the copyright laws will allow more sharing if we ever get to that stage - or our auxiliary brains will be DRM infested.
As for long life batteries. Many scientists claim the cold fusion stuff doesn't generate excess heat, even if it doesn't, it might turn out to be a new type of battery - and that's worth exploring too IMO. Of course if it does generate excess heat then:).
I disagree. A bionic eye is worth much more than a car that gets 100mpg.
1) Economical diesel cars already get close to that, so if car owners become really interested, it will be built without the need of a prize. If you go pure biodiesel you might even be able to meet the 200g/mile emissions requirement if it is a "net calculation". 2) A car that gets 100mpg from fossil fuels might end up a mere curiosity if we ever shift big time from fossil fuels to something else other than biofuels.
In contrast a working bionic eye is going to be useful for as long as humans (or other similar creatures) want eyes.
An efficient biofuel car is useful, but it by itself will not deal with the problem of starving out the poor - because as long as the rich are many times richer than the numerous poor, they can afford to pay a lot more to feed their cars so they wouldn't feel the pressure. It would likely need external regulation to make them care.
Here's some rough math:
Recommended energy per person: 2000 kcal = 8.36 megajoules/day.
1 litre of vegetable oil = 34MJ - or about the daily energy allowance for 4 people. 1 litre of vegetable => approximately USD1.
How much would a rich (e.g. anyone who can afford a car) person be willing to pay per day to feed his car? USD2? If he can afford to pay more than 8 poor people, the 8 poor people are going to get less food assuming we don't keep converting forests to farmland.
I don't know if it's safe for laptop keyboards - a colleague used to use the QWERTY layout but for amusement he rearranged the keys on his desktop keyboard. A-Z from top to bottom:). I could still use his keyboard, but I think a lot of people couldn't:).
Honestly though, if you don't want to lend your computer to others, you should just say "No", rather than to lend it _insincerely_ and make it difficult.
If you do want to lend your computer, and don't want them to mess up your stuff or read your emails, just create a guest account for general use. Works on WinXP, Linux etc.
Lastly, a paranoid or security conscious person wouldn't want to use an untrusted person's computer - since there could be key loggers etc
In my experience film does not run smoothly at 24 fps.
Either they have to smear and blur it all over the screen so you can't see the jerkiness (but that means you see less stuff). Or it looks like it's "rippling" down or something.
With LoTR some of the computer generated scenes were sharp (not fake motion blurred), but because it was 24fps it was jerky especially in the scenery pans.
The resolution was good. But if it was a PC game, one would be thinking about getting a faster graphics card:).
Too bad most LCDs are slow. Some of the older ones even have terrible input lag/latency.
Well the kitten could grow up and pass toxoplasmosis to humans, causing many of those humans to have slower reflexes and thus be less able to drive.:).
Picking up the phone is definitely better when you need low latency communications.
However I find too many people take 20 minutes to say something that just takes 10 seconds to read. So I'd rather they send me an email for that sort of stuff instead.
Then it's their 20 minutes plus my 10 seconds. Rather than their 20 minutes plus my 20 minutes.
So for "tell me what you want", email is better.
For "Do you want X? If yes do you want Y also? etc" phone or instant messaging (IM) is better.
In fact, IM is superior in some ways to phone conversations or even face to face meetings, since with IM people can be in more than one meeting at the same time. And then they can post the minutes (logs) up, so the Boss and relevant people can go through them if they want.
With normal meetings - meeting time = 1 hour, each human idle (wasted) time = 55 minutes, human "useful" time = 5 minutes. Multiply that by the number of participants and there's seriously a lot of wasted time.
Whereas with multiple IM meetings you could get the useful time up. Doesn't matter even if people watch youtube, code or do other stuff while being in meetings - from the logs you can see whether they are still effective.
But I doubt your friend should make it a habit of updating her "flash player" based on what some myspace page tells her.
See the thing is, it isn't that safe. The malware writers are really out to get people like your friend. And even "legit" software makers have done pretty dubious and stupid stuff (in addition to making pretty bad mistakes).
So some of them have been burnt so badly they've decided it's better to not install anything new anymore.
Even if as a result they are more vulnerable to being infected by malware that slows down their computers. The funny thing is most AV programs nowadays already make computers a lot slower, so if the malware disables the AV programs and runs, they might not notice the difference;).(Yes I know there are other evil things malware do ).
The big problem is users can't tell the difference between an OK "update" and a not OK "update".
Truth is figuring that out is not an easy problem. In fact from a theoretical POV, it's harder than solving the halting problem, since:
1) They don't necessarily have meaningful access to a _true_ description of the program (or update in this case). 2) They don't know what all the inputs are.
A halting problem is: given a description of a program and a finite input, decide whether the program finishes running or will run forever. It's been proven to be unsolvable. The update/install problem is: given a potentially false description of a program, decide whether the program will screw up your system or not. Go figure.
The people who make operating systems should make things easier and safer than that (I've proposed a way before, but we're getting off topic enough already).
> why doesn't Helpdesk simply state that they only support a given set of standards?
They often do. And that's when Joe tells his geek friend that he's going back to windows, since nobody could help him when he had IT problems on his business trip.
With Windows, if a windows install is significantly different, the user who changed it usually doesn't need Helpdesk (and actually wants the next line of support).
With Linux, I noticed on one Ubuntu the "start menu" is on the top by default, on another it's on the bottom, whoopee.
Of course with Vista I can't find "anything" anymore, but if you're a helpdesk tech for the "public" you're expected to know Vista and often OSX[1], but seldom "Desktop Linux" - since there are so many varieties for so few users.
Without some sort of standards how would a helpdesk worker even know where the "start button" is on a caller's "Linux Desktop"? Or what it even looks like, or if it's even there?
Remember the helpdesk worker might not be working for the same company as the user. For example: if Mr XYZ goes to a hotel and has problems with "hotel internet", they might be calling the "hotel internet helpdesk". Same for other stuff e.g. bank and financial sites.
BTW Microsoft has created a similar problem for themselves by changing things immensely with Vista (and Office 2007). Lucky for them, they're in a different market position but even they are having problems with market adoption, so go figure.
Slashdot Mirror
1) Was there deception involved?
Yes.
2) Was there significant dishonest gain involved?
Yes.
So there's actually a case.
If you think that's AOK, then I'm sure some Nigerian scammers will be happy to talk to you.
But you do need enough pressure to actually move the blood _up_. Unless you're saying the dinosaurs lowered their heads to allow blood movement, then only stick their heads up when necessary.
A theory of mine is that long necked dinosaurs had auxiliary hearts in their necks - so the chest heart only needs to pump part of the way up, the neck heart(s) takes care of the other part. To me that would make more sense than a single massive chest heart with enough pressure to pump all the way. But since soft tissue isn't well preserved/fossilized, it's going to be hard to get evidence. As it is there are very few fossilized dinosaur hearts found, and I doubt anybody is looking for heart like stuff in the neck area.
Some dinosaurs already had auxiliary brains - nerve impulses take rather long to travel all the way from the tail to the head. So why not extra hearts?
While I do tend to refer to them as US citizens, the term "American" is not ambiguous.
After all the Brazilians usuallly call themselves Brazilians and not Americans. The Canadians would agree they're technically Americans, but they'd rather avoid the term and stick to being called Canadians. Same goes for the other countries.
Who else in the world would call themselves Americans? The people of the USA that's who. The ones who would hold a "world series" where the rest of the world doesn't show up. Or have an International Code Council that's not actually international, that creates an "International Building Code" that isn't, etc.
At least they've stuck to calling themselves "Americans" - would be a bit confusing if they enlarged their claim.
Well he gave the Queen of England an ipod stuffed with songs.
I'm not sure the media industry appreciates that sort of thing - weren't they rather upset about such ipods being sold on ebay before?
For a lot of things it's the "top few" that make the difference. Being the top 2000th tennis player doesn't count for that much. I doubt the top 2000th mathematician in the world is going to advance the field of mathematics that much.
;) ).
So I would be interested to see if the extreme top women in math can really match the extreme top men, and how many of that level are there.
The study doesn't really show this. I don't recall many math geniuses who do the "great stuff" going for math competitions. PhDs don't really prove that much either.
FWIW a female professor in China and her team have done pretty good work finding flaws in MD5 and SHA1. That's the sort of data point I'd find relevant. A significant advance in the field (and a headache to others
Not for very long and that's the problem :).
10 square metres of oil palm produces 1 litre of vegetable oil per year.
So let's say 3650 square metres to produce 1 litre per day.
A similar size area (in suitable climate) should be able to produce 4 tons of bananas per year (assuming no petro-fertilizers etc). That's about 9800kcal per day (assuming 90kcal/100g bananas). Keep a few chickens around for protein, grow stuff under the banana trees, maybe have a small fish pond.
They might do OK till someone kicks them off for a biofuel plantation...
Depends on how good the eyes are ;). If we have really good eyes, we might spend less energy on lighting...
;) ) and have the display appear in your mind. Then you can send the image(s) straight to someone else. Virtual telepathy! Hope the copyright laws will allow more sharing if we ever get to that stage - or our auxiliary brains will be DRM infested.
:).
Seriously though, if the eyes are good, it could become practical for people to add an "aux video in" (or two). That could dramatically change things more than high capacity batteries.
Why bother with energy guzzling LCDs for laptops if you can just strap on a small brick computer (iBrain?
As for long life batteries. Many scientists claim the cold fusion stuff doesn't generate excess heat, even if it doesn't, it might turn out to be a new type of battery - and that's worth exploring too IMO. Of course if it does generate excess heat then
I disagree. A bionic eye is worth much more than a car that gets 100mpg.
/day.
1) Economical diesel cars already get close to that, so if car owners become really interested, it will be built without the need of a prize. If you go pure biodiesel you might even be able to meet the 200g/mile emissions requirement if it is a "net calculation".
2) A car that gets 100mpg from fossil fuels might end up a mere curiosity if we ever shift big time from fossil fuels to something else other than biofuels.
In contrast a working bionic eye is going to be useful for as long as humans (or other similar creatures) want eyes.
An efficient biofuel car is useful, but it by itself will not deal with the problem of starving out the poor - because as long as the rich are many times richer than the numerous poor, they can afford to pay a lot more to feed their cars so they wouldn't feel the pressure. It would likely need external regulation to make them care.
Here's some rough math:
Recommended energy per person: 2000 kcal = 8.36 megajoules
1 litre of vegetable oil = 34MJ - or about the daily energy allowance for 4 people.
1 litre of vegetable => approximately USD1.
How much would a rich (e.g. anyone who can afford a car) person be willing to pay per day to feed his car? USD2? If he can afford to pay more than 8 poor people, the 8 poor people are going to get less food assuming we don't keep converting forests to farmland.
I think you're confusing BoFH with Pros.
The popular PC graphics benchmark is going multi-platform :).
I see no mention in the article on how long the resulting bulbs would last.
The process might make the bulb brighter but shorten the lifespan.
I don't know if it's safe for laptop keyboards - a colleague used to use the QWERTY layout but for amusement he rearranged the keys on his desktop keyboard. A-Z from top to bottom :). I could still use his keyboard, but I think a lot of people couldn't :).
Honestly though, if you don't want to lend your computer to others, you should just say "No", rather than to lend it _insincerely_ and make it difficult.
If you do want to lend your computer, and don't want them to mess up your stuff or read your emails, just create a guest account for general use. Works on WinXP, Linux etc.
Lastly, a paranoid or security conscious person wouldn't want to use an untrusted person's computer - since there could be key loggers etc
In my experience film does not run smoothly at 24 fps.
:).
Either they have to smear and blur it all over the screen so you can't see the jerkiness (but that means you see less stuff). Or it looks like it's "rippling" down or something.
With LoTR some of the computer generated scenes were sharp (not fake motion blurred), but because it was 24fps it was jerky especially in the scenery pans.
The resolution was good. But if it was a PC game, one would be thinking about getting a faster graphics card
Too bad most LCDs are slow. Some of the older ones even have terrible input lag/latency.
Well the kitten could grow up and pass toxoplasmosis to humans, causing many of those humans to have slower reflexes and thus be less able to drive. :).
Picking up the phone is definitely better when you need low latency communications.
:).
However I find too many people take 20 minutes to say something that just takes 10 seconds to read.
So I'd rather they send me an email for that sort of stuff instead.
Then it's their 20 minutes plus my 10 seconds.
Rather than their 20 minutes plus my 20 minutes.
So for "tell me what you want", email is better.
For "Do you want X? If yes do you want Y also? etc" phone or instant messaging (IM) is better.
In fact, IM is superior in some ways to phone conversations or even face to face meetings, since with IM people can be in more than one meeting at the same time. And then they can post the minutes (logs) up, so the Boss and relevant people can go through them if they want.
With normal meetings - meeting time = 1 hour, each human idle (wasted) time = 55 minutes, human "useful" time = 5 minutes. Multiply that by the number of participants and there's seriously a lot of wasted time.
Whereas with multiple IM meetings you could get the useful time up. Doesn't matter even if people watch youtube, code or do other stuff while being in meetings - from the logs you can see whether they are still effective.
Luckily I'm not a boss
I didn't say they'd comment when they screw up.
I'm sure they'd make the break look like an anchor or something else did it rather than it looking like a tap/splice gone wrong.
If it helps (I doubt it) they could get some boat to drag an anchor...
Yeah something like this might help:
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-bugs/2007-09/msg02994.html
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/156693
Not easy to implement.
Maybe your myspace link was fine.
;).(Yes I know there are other evil things malware do ).
But I doubt your friend should make it a habit of updating her "flash player" based on what some myspace page tells her.
See the thing is, it isn't that safe. The malware writers are really out to get people like your friend. And even "legit" software makers have done pretty dubious and stupid stuff (in addition to making pretty bad mistakes).
So some of them have been burnt so badly they've decided it's better to not install anything new anymore.
Even if as a result they are more vulnerable to being infected by malware that slows down their computers. The funny thing is most AV programs nowadays already make computers a lot slower, so if the malware disables the AV programs and runs, they might not notice the difference
The big problem is users can't tell the difference between an OK "update" and a not OK "update".
Truth is figuring that out is not an easy problem. In fact from a theoretical POV, it's harder than solving the halting problem, since:
1) They don't necessarily have meaningful access to a _true_ description of the program (or update in this case).
2) They don't know what all the inputs are.
A halting problem is: given a description of a program and a finite input, decide whether the program finishes running or will run forever. It's been proven to be unsolvable.
The update/install problem is: given a potentially false description of a program, decide whether the program will screw up your system or not. Go figure.
The people who make operating systems should make things easier and safer than that (I've proposed a way before, but we're getting off topic enough already).
Yeah and when they screw up, I bet they try to shift the blame on trawlers, sharks or someone dragging an anchor...
Yeah, they should mark it blue instead.
Plenty of red clay. Plenty of browns and yellows. Maybe even some greens. Not so much blue soil around.
> it isn't the magic of having "human" tissue that gives anyone rights - it is our intelligence and self-awarenes.
So when do we start giving out intelligence tests? After all there are many very stupid people around.
Young chimps have beaten uni students in memory tests:
http://richarddawkins.net/article,1949,Chimps-beat-humans-in-memory-test,BBC
It seems a big difference between humans and chimps is "understanding other humans": http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14224459
So maybe many slashdotters wouldn't qualify as human? :)
> why doesn't Helpdesk simply state that they only support a given set of standards?
They often do. And that's when Joe tells his geek friend that he's going back to windows, since nobody could help him when he had IT problems on his business trip.
With Windows, if a windows install is significantly different, the user who changed it usually doesn't need Helpdesk (and actually wants the next line of support).
With Linux, I noticed on one Ubuntu the "start menu" is on the top by default, on another it's on the bottom, whoopee.
Of course with Vista I can't find "anything" anymore, but if you're a helpdesk tech for the "public" you're expected to know Vista and often OSX[1], but seldom "Desktop Linux" - since there are so many varieties for so few users.
[1] They're a significant percentage nowadays.
No his mom actually locked him in the basement for everyone's safety (and sanity).
But he hasn't actually noticed yet.
Maybe the neighbours might complain about the smell after a while (even though he's not dead...).
Yes, but I doubt it's going to happen.
Without some sort of standards how would a helpdesk worker even know where the "start button" is on a caller's "Linux Desktop"? Or what it even looks like, or if it's even there?
Remember the helpdesk worker might not be working for the same company as the user. For example: if Mr XYZ goes to a hotel and has problems with "hotel internet", they might be calling the "hotel internet helpdesk". Same for other stuff e.g. bank and financial sites.
BTW Microsoft has created a similar problem for themselves by changing things immensely with Vista (and Office 2007). Lucky for them, they're in a different market position but even they are having problems with market adoption, so go figure.
The other big difference is it'll take much longer for normal evolution to get a mouse to go fluorescent or get an IQ of 85.
So people won't need to deal with it just _yet_.