I actually got the correct number by pasting it to a Google search. But somehow mistyped it - muscle memory I guess - I type 131072 a lot more than 131071. I guess I should copy and paste more;).
That's not the problem. You only have to write/read each thread you choose. The problem is it will take a lot more time and work to create.
Imagine if you had a "choose your own adventure hypertext book" where each page only had 2 different options that don't ever merge. After 16 of these steps you'd have only: 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 32 + 64 + 128 + 256 + 512 + 1024 + 2048 + 4096 + 8192 + 16384 + 32768 + 65536 = 131072 pages to write.
So most authors would eventually merge many paths, but then it starts looking like a linear story. And for what benefit are those paths for? When you go to a restaurant for a good meal you might want some choice, but you don't want a zillion choices. You don't want to choose which herbs go in your dish etc, you want the Chef to make most of the decisions and hopefully you enjoy the final result. So you pick a book, and you hope the author has written stuff that you'd like.
On the other hand, I think it would be interesting if Tolkien was alive today and put his stuff on wikia or something. I might actually pay to access that:). I found the LoTR rather plodding to read. But I can imagine if he had filled a wiki with all of the poems, definitions, languages etc (see the Silmarillion for examples), quite a number of nerds would get lost in it for hours.
The US Federal Reserve has already created trillions of US dollars. Or billions (depends on whether you consider the loans themselves as money creation, or the money "made" from the loans before repayment).
I don't think NK can print AND use[1] even half the amount at the same rate the Federal Reserve has been creating US dollars:).
NK only uses the created USD for the Dictatorship's benefit and not the benefit of the US citizens.
But does the Federal Reserve use the created USD for the benefit of the US citizens? So guess who you should really be worrying about.
Unless you have a battery backed up RAM drive you wouldn't be able to write something "permanently".
And you'd still need it as a "drive" because operating systems etc treats drives differently. Drives aren't normally wiped on reboots, bluescreens, application crashes.
Note: at the 6th try, the 6th Neo succeeds at both saving Trinity AND Zion. That was a significant advance over the previous iterations.
I suspect Neo is both human and machine. The Architect says Neo is human and the humans said jokingly that Neo is a machine (a hint from the writers?). And I say he's probably both and hence that's why he is different/special.
In contrast, there is unlikely to be any further depth to the story when "Tarzan Boy" (Indy Jr) swings from tree to tree in that travesty of an Indiana Jones movie.
Hey I cranked down my expectations and pushed up my "suspension of disbelief" at the start. When the ball bearings started flying around, I pushed up my suspension of disbelief even more. So fridge scene was nothing.
But when "Tarzan Boy" (junior) started swinging from tree to tree in the chase scene, I went "WHAT THE FUCK!". There have been so many entertaining chase scenes in Hollywood movies, some in the Indiana Jones movies themselves. So why did they have to resort to "Tarzan Boy"?
Ignoring physics for entertainment is one thing, but that was just terrible.
From the link it wasn't busted very well. Since 1) The previous failures were due to Buster falling off. 2) When Buster was under the raft, using it as a parachute, Buster was damaged but might have survived.
the chest sensors showed that he might have lived (50g shock watch was broken, but 75 and 100 were not), however, even though Buster might have lived, the notion that someone could have lept out and rigged the parachute-like harness is very unlikely.
And if someone has the elite skills and luck to stay on the raft (not being a dead weight like buster), and thus landing on it, he would not be as badly damaged as Buster.
Tang Lee Ping Kuala Lumpur: In February of 2001 Tang Lee Ping of Malaysia fell 1,500 meters after her main and back-up parachutes failed to open. She woke up three hours later in a nearby hospital. Her injuries were minor (only bruises). She attributed her survival to God and a soft landing area.
Railroads have enormous infrastructure to maintain and costs of doing that are mostly fixed. Trains demand high utilization to be cost effective. That could be achieved only through massive subsidizing and that is not very popular.
And this will apply to the space elevator too. 96000km of high-tech material out there, which will need to be repaired and maintained (at least checked to see if it needs to be repaired). It's going to take serious wattage to keep a pod moving upwards at 200kph. So you'd either need power cables or "power beaming" (which might prove to be quite dangerous[1]). You may also need stuff at certain points to stop the whole thing from "twanging" like a poorly damped guitar string;). Conducting part of the ionosphere to the ground might be a source of power, but also a source of problems.
I wonder how much the interest on the loan to build it would be.
At least, until it gets so bad that everyone takes to the streets and we wind up shooting each other until the rage is burned out and a Dictator of some stripe takes the reins.
Fixed that for you.
When you have a violent revolution, the odds are the person or group willing AND capable of exerting the most violence will rise to the top. Once they rise to the top, they are unlikely to give up their power or hold democratic elections. At which point who in the country can kick them out? They already have proven to be capable of the most violence.
And that's why Communist revolutions end up as dictatorships - the Communist Manifesto has violence as part of the implementation plan. When the process of selecting your leaders is not by votes but by violence what do you expect? Once in a while you may get a benevolent dictator, but generally you have to wait for the Dictator's children or grandchildren's generation for things to start changing for the better.
That would make even sociopaths think harder before telling others to put life and limb on the line. When you send soldiers to war you're not sending them to be shot in nonlethal parts of their bodies.
So what? If enough computers meet the requirements then it's fine in my book. After all my computer requires electricity to work.
In fact if it's cross platform on multiple browsers it's better in some ways than those intros/demos that only ran on one specific platform (I won't be surprised if some of those were even fussier and wouldn't work on some variants of the same platform).
Only those still alive and fully intact after 10 years of riding motorcycles. I see plenty of motorcyclists who clearly don't know how to ride a bike safely, they just haven't died or been maimed yet.
FWIW, it would be funny if you had a law that allowed motorcyclists to not wear helmet, but any motorcyclist dying in an accident and proven to be riding without a helmet is classified as having done the equivalent of signing an organ donor card. Too harsh of course:).
Eventually MicroChips plans to develop even smarter models that can administer drugs in response to on-chip sensors, such as a glucose sensor for diabetics.
The obvious problem is overdose/underdose due to malfunction. Another problem is what happens when you have more than one of these chips and suddenly get an allergic/bad reaction to one of the drugs, and you're not sure which ones. Do you go for surgery to take out all the implants? Hopefully you can use the wireless method to shut them all off, and the hospital knows where all the implants are and has all the necessary equipment to shut them off without surgery.
That's because monitor resolution has stagnated. Perhaps 1920 x 1080 is enough for most people. But add 3D and 120Hz updates and you might start needing a bit more grunt.
Slashdot Mirror
Will someone please apply to put the relevant people in the TfL under an ASBO?
Attempting to force 4 friends not to talk to each other for 10 years is anti-social behaviour.
I actually got the correct number by pasting it to a Google search. But somehow mistyped it - muscle memory I guess - I type 131072 a lot more than 131071. I guess I should copy and paste more ;).
That's not the problem. You only have to write/read each thread you choose. The problem is it will take a lot more time and work to create.
:). I found the LoTR rather plodding to read. But I can imagine if he had filled a wiki with all of the poems, definitions, languages etc (see the Silmarillion for examples), quite a number of nerds would get lost in it for hours.
Imagine if you had a "choose your own adventure hypertext book" where each page only had 2 different options that don't ever merge. After 16 of these steps you'd have only:
1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 32 + 64 + 128 + 256 + 512 + 1024 + 2048 + 4096 + 8192 + 16384 + 32768 + 65536 = 131072 pages to write.
So most authors would eventually merge many paths, but then it starts looking like a linear story. And for what benefit are those paths for? When you go to a restaurant for a good meal you might want some choice, but you don't want a zillion choices. You don't want to choose which herbs go in your dish etc, you want the Chef to make most of the decisions and hopefully you enjoy the final result. So you pick a book, and you hope the author has written stuff that you'd like.
On the other hand, I think it would be interesting if Tolkien was alive today and put his stuff on wikia or something. I might actually pay to access that
The US Federal Reserve has already created trillions of US dollars. Or billions (depends on whether you consider the loans themselves as money creation, or the money "made" from the loans before repayment).
:).
;)
I don't think NK can print AND use[1] even half the amount at the same rate the Federal Reserve has been creating US dollars
NK only uses the created USD for the Dictatorship's benefit and not the benefit of the US citizens.
But does the Federal Reserve use the created USD for the benefit of the US citizens? So guess who you should really be worrying about.
Certainly not the Wookie...
[1] If they don't use it nobody will notice.
How much will you pay for the air you need if there was a shortfall of 20%?
Right now it's free. So it'll be a price hike of infinity percent.
Unless you have a battery backed up RAM drive you wouldn't be able to write something "permanently".
And you'd still need it as a "drive" because operating systems etc treats drives differently. Drives aren't normally wiped on reboots, bluescreens, application crashes.
The sequels to The Matrix weren't that bad if you don't take everything at face value and assume the writers actually weren't that stupid.
See my posts:
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1963928&cid=34980542
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1225567&cid=27899067
Note: at the 6th try, the 6th Neo succeeds at both saving Trinity AND Zion. That was a significant advance over the previous iterations.
I suspect Neo is both human and machine. The Architect says Neo is human and the humans said jokingly that Neo is a machine (a hint from the writers?). And I say he's probably both and hence that's why he is different/special.
In contrast, there is unlikely to be any further depth to the story when "Tarzan Boy" (Indy Jr) swings from tree to tree in that travesty of an Indiana Jones movie.
Hey I cranked down my expectations and pushed up my "suspension of disbelief" at the start. When the ball bearings started flying around, I pushed up my suspension of disbelief even more. So fridge scene was nothing.
But when "Tarzan Boy" (junior) started swinging from tree to tree in the chase scene, I went "WHAT THE FUCK!". There have been so many entertaining chase scenes in Hollywood movies, some in the Indiana Jones movies themselves. So why did they have to resort to "Tarzan Boy"?
Ignoring physics for entertainment is one thing, but that was just terrible.
From the link it wasn't busted very well. Since
1) The previous failures were due to Buster falling off.
2) When Buster was under the raft, using it as a parachute, Buster was damaged but might have survived.
the chest sensors showed that he might have lived (50g shock watch was broken, but 75 and 100 were not), however, even though Buster might have lived, the notion that someone could have lept out and rigged the parachute-like harness is very unlikely.
And if someone has the elite skills and luck to stay on the raft (not being a dead weight like buster), and thus landing on it, he would not be as badly damaged as Buster.
Also raft size is important.
A few more here:
http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/unlucky.html
e.g.
Tang Lee Ping Kuala Lumpur: In February of 2001 Tang Lee Ping of Malaysia fell 1,500 meters after her main and back-up parachutes failed to open. She woke up three hours later in a nearby hospital. Her injuries were minor (only bruises). She attributed her survival to God and a soft landing area.
Bruises only! I think 1500 metres is enough distance to get to "normal" terminal velocity.
And: http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/leeds.html
I walked away without so much as a scratch. Following this incident I must have made over a hundred free falls and static line jumps without incident.
Railroads have enormous infrastructure to maintain and costs of doing that are mostly fixed. Trains demand high utilization to be cost effective. That could be achieved only through massive subsidizing and that is not very popular.
And this will apply to the space elevator too. 96000km of high-tech material out there, which will need to be repaired and maintained (at least checked to see if it needs to be repaired). It's going to take serious wattage to keep a pod moving upwards at 200kph. So you'd either need power cables or "power beaming" (which might prove to be quite dangerous[1]). You may also need stuff at certain points to stop the whole thing from "twanging" like a poorly damped guitar string ;). Conducting part of the ionosphere to the ground might be a source of power, but also a source of problems.
I wonder how much the interest on the loan to build it would be.
[1] If the ribbon wiggles a bit, you can't zap it, or there goes your investment.
Make sure you test the ribbon material against bright light and other damaging stuff: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2219-nanotubes-go-flash-bang-wallop.html
Bad for business?
Imagine thousands of accounts doing the same thing then slashdot = stagnated.
;)
Anyway why do you cower? what are you afraid of?
Wait a minute...
Even when the post is coherent and clear, half the time the people replying don't seem to be able to read and understand it correctly either :).
Back to room sized computers :).
At least, until it gets so bad that everyone takes to the streets and we wind up shooting each other until the rage is burned out and a Dictator of some stripe takes the reins.
Fixed that for you.
When you have a violent revolution, the odds are the person or group willing AND capable of exerting the most violence will rise to the top. Once they rise to the top, they are unlikely to give up their power or hold democratic elections. At which point who in the country can kick them out? They already have proven to be capable of the most violence.
And that's why Communist revolutions end up as dictatorships - the Communist Manifesto has violence as part of the implementation plan. When the process of selecting your leaders is not by votes but by violence what do you expect? Once in a while you may get a benevolent dictator, but generally you have to wait for the Dictator's children or grandchildren's generation for things to start changing for the better.
Shot in a known nonlethal way. Bah. Many sociopaths would do that if it means they get what they want.
Here's how to really be commander-in-chief, risk your life on the line and lead the soldiers out to battle in spirit:
http://slashdot.org/journal/208853/how-to-reduce-unwanted-wars
That would make even sociopaths think harder before telling others to put life and limb on the line. When you send soldiers to war you're not sending them to be shot in nonlethal parts of their bodies.
So what? If enough computers meet the requirements then it's fine in my book. After all my computer requires electricity to work.
In fact if it's cross platform on multiple browsers it's better in some ways than those intros/demos that only ran on one specific platform (I won't be surprised if some of those were even fussier and wouldn't work on some variants of the same platform).
Easy for you to say, Coward. In some places it's common to beat the confession out of suspects, sometimes to death.
Even in supposedly more civilized places, the innocent often get coerced to pleading guilty: http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/When_the_Innocent_Plead_Guilty.php
Then they fail to get the class credits?
Only those still alive and fully intact after 10 years of riding motorcycles. I see plenty of motorcyclists who clearly don't know how to ride a bike safely, they just haven't died or been maimed yet.
:).
FWIW, it would be funny if you had a law that allowed motorcyclists to not wear helmet, but any motorcyclist dying in an accident and proven to be riding without a helmet is classified as having done the equivalent of signing an organ donor card. Too harsh of course
This guy is a FARMER, and if he's to be believed has limited time off-farm for recreational purposes, so this activity fills that gap for him.
Hmm, I wonder how many excavator, truck and tractor drivers have mini-farms for recreational purposes, does farmville count? ;)
Regarding the future proposal:
Eventually MicroChips plans to develop even smarter models that can administer drugs in response to on-chip sensors, such as a glucose sensor for diabetics.
The obvious problem is overdose/underdose due to malfunction.
Another problem is what happens when you have more than one of these chips and suddenly get an allergic/bad reaction to one of the drugs, and you're not sure which ones. Do you go for surgery to take out all the implants?
Hopefully you can use the wireless method to shut them all off, and the hospital knows where all the implants are and has all the necessary equipment to shut them off without surgery.
That's because monitor resolution has stagnated. Perhaps 1920 x 1080 is enough for most people. But add 3D and 120Hz updates and you might start needing a bit more grunt.
I don't think it's so simple as that. See: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2011/02/28/the-mere-existence-of-whales/