What IF a black hole were created, which was actually stable for a length of time (as has recently been discussed), and it simply plunged towards the center of the earth, sucking up mass at an exponentially increasing rate as it went?
Can someone explain why that scenario is impossible (presuming the creation of a stable black hole that escapes the containment of the equipment)?
I haven't read the actual paper, just the article and abstract, but I would think one could use "percentage of global population" instead of an absolute body count for global risk assessment purposes.
But what [T3] DID to that was terrible was ruin the rather excellent and thought-provoking ending that T2 gave the movies.
Well that's your opinion (and I know it's shared by many others) but I will respectfully disagree.
In T2, it is revealed that CyberDyne created SkyNet thanks to a chip from the future. This is a paradox. The "first time around", there would be no chip from the future, because CyberDyne hadn't created that future yet, because they hadn't received the chip, etc etc.
In T3, they elegantly resolved this paradox, by showing you how it WOULD have happened, "the first time around"... Connor becomes involved with the daughter of the guy responsible for SkyNet. That's how he learned about SkyNet, and how he survived the holocaust and was in a position to start organizing the resistance, originally, before all that tedious mucking about with time travel. Everything makes perfect sense now.
T3 then made it "Look it WILL happen and there's FUCK ALL you can do to stop it".
Nonsense. Just because Arnie said "It is inevitable" doesn't make it Absolute Fact. It's a frakin robot programmed by an evil AI, not the ultimate arbiter of cosmic wisdom. They got to the military base a few minutes too late to stop SkyNet from being switched on, that could have gone entirely differently.
So to sum up, you CAN change the future, and they did just that in T2... they prevented the whole "CyberDyne reverse-engineers chip from future" scenario.
Unfortunately, that was just a "shortcut" to accelerate the ORIGINAL development of SkyNet, which was by the military.
THAT scenario (military activates SkyNet) could be prevented too. They just simply didn't succeed.
So I don't feel like it took away from T2 at all, in fact I feel T3 enhanced and fleshed out the original story.
I have an ancient NEC Superscript 660i laser printer. I think I got it in '96 or so.
This thing is so old the only way to install the actual proper NEC drivers is to download FLOPPY DISK IMAGES and run them from 1.44MB discs.
It's so old they only have drivers for Win 3.1/9x, but that's OK because I can use a standard HP Laserjet 4p driver with it.
It's so old that the paper hopper is missing/broken, I am using a playing card as a paper guide, and I am holding the front panel in place with scotch tape.
But guess what? Damn thing still prints PERFECTLY after all these years, and I think I've replaced the toner only twice, and for 3 years or so it was used as a daily workhorse at a tech startup.
That being said, I do have an inkjet (Canon, more expensive up front than Epson but cheaper operating costs) I use when I really need colour.
The end of the good mix for me seemed to be the Sub-Atmosphere Jump of Galactica (at the beginning of Season 2?)
That was the beginning of season 3. They blew a ton of their season budget on the escape from New Caprica, which is why the rest of the season 3 was pretty "boring" by comparison.
Things got interesting again at the end of S3 (Baltar's trial) and have stayed pretty good in S4, IMHO, and after the last episode it's looking like they've got a good yarn to spin to close the series off.
I've seen several people here in slashdot refer to the government hauling American Citizens off to GITMO
I don't give a flying fig whether the people they "dissapear" are American Citizens(tm) or otherwise, and the fact you're hinging your argument on the distinction is telling.
Do you remember when the term "extraordinary rendition" was NOT part of the common vernacular?
June 2006 report from the Council of Europe estimated 100 people had been kidnapped by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on EU territory, with the cooperation of Council of Europe members and rendered to other countries, often after having transited through secret detention centers ("black sites") used by the CIA, some sited in Europe. According to the separate European Parliament report of February 2007, the CIA has conducted 1,245 flights, many of them to destinations where suspects could face torture, in violation of article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
The two most important words in the above paragraph are "kidnapped" and "secret".
Oh, but these people aren't American Citizens, so who cares about their rights under Geneva, eh? If the govt says they're Bad Guys, that's good enough for me, no due process required.
For the record, I don't think the judge here will be "gitmo'd", and I think the OP's comment to that effect was tongue-in-cheek. But your apologist stance of "Gosh, they'd never do that to an AMERICAN" doesn't fly.
"First they came for the foreigners, and I said nothing, because I was not a foreigner".
Yeah, assuming politicians will abuse power is the exact same argument as assuming the existence of God. </sarcasm>
The entire concept of the US system of government (checks and balances, separation of powers, etc) is PREMISED on the assumption of politicians abusing power.
The FACT is, since 9/11, the US govt has been trying to assert the right to detain "enemy combatants" (which is vaguely defined) without legal recourse, or anyone even knowing about it. That is a cause of legitimate concern. "Gitmo'd" is just shorthand.
Now don't get me wrong, it's useless for gaming (no hardware accel), and when it has a lot of screen activity it eats a fair chunk of CPU (up to 25% of my Athlon 4600) to compress the video signal enough to squeeze into USB bandwidth, but for virtually all non-gaming applications it's perfectly fine.... and both of the problems I just mentioned could be addressed with a dedicated card in the box, instead of relying on a pure USB dongle.
And if a display can be run over wireless USB, there's certainly no obstacle for printers, mics, or any of the other things he mentions.
I do tend to agree with your general point though; most of what he nailed was fairly easy to spot from '99 trends.
"The definition of necessity, however, is a moving target"
Bill Clinton, is that you?
I disagree. Necessity is an objective and well defined term. Food, water, and oxygen are necessities of life. Javascript is a necessity for, say, a drop down menu working in IE6 due to lack of proper:hover support.
Something like client-side validation, however is not a necessity. According to your stated position, that means it should never be used. Period. But that's asinine, there's nothing wrong with client-side validation (for improved user experience, and reducing server hits) backed up by proper server-side validation (for security).
Well, you shouldn't use it except out of necessity, but that goes for any technology.
You seem to have a habit of making sweeping generalizations that fall completely apart under scrutiny. No technology should be used except for reasons of necessity? Really?
Ever used elevators or escalators when you could've taken stairs? Ever used a car, bike, or transit when you could've walked?
Ever use technology for entertainment purposes? Ever watched a movie? Played a video game? Surfed the web?
The fact is, we all use technology to make things more convenient and improve our quality of life on a daily basis, and much of it has nothing whatsoever to do with actual NECESSITY.
Re:jQuery is very well thought-out
on
jQuery in Action
·
· Score: 1
Heh, I hear you on the animation stuff. Took me a while to figure out why sliding menus were getting truncated when I came back to them... it's because stop()'ing the animation midway on mouseout doesn't reset the object to its start or end state, you have to do that yourself. (Which makes sense when you think about it, but this point could be documented a bit better)
Re:Could you at least explain what it is
on
jQuery in Action
·
· Score: 1
The opening paragraph describes it as a popular cross-browser Javascript library. The rest of the review describes in detail what you can do with it.
You could also Google it and go to their homepage or Wiki article for more info.
It's a book review, not an article on jQuery. He provided plenty of context imho.
Your original post said, in no uncertain terms, NEVER USE JAVASCRIPT UNLESS YOU NEED TO. That was your main point, was it not?
Well I'm sorry but that's just wrong, there's nothing wrong with using Javascript to enhance the user experience, so long as it remains functional without it.
A better rule is: Never make your site DEPENDENT on Javascript unless you need to. Perhaps that's actually the point you were trying to make, but that's not how you phrased it.
Left4Dead (4-player zombie survival co-op, released yesterday by Valve) deserves a mention. While not exactly procedural "content", it is perhaps one of the first examples of "procedural gameplay" (at least in a modern shooter).
For those who don't know, Valve built an algorithmic "pacing engine" into L4D called the Director, which has complete control of what enemies and items you encounter.
What this means is that every playthrough is completely different and you never know what to expect. It's exhilarating and always keeps you on your toes.
More games need random and procedural stuff... forget about saving development effort, it leads to massive replayability. Look at Diablo, for example. I wish World of Goo had a procedural level generator.;)
We studied this in Sociology when I was in university.
The gist was, it's all about social stigmas and pressures during critical years. Fact is, CS and Math are seen as "nerdy male" things, and girls (say, in high school) generally don't want to be seen in that light.
Legend has it that Leonardo da Vinci kept a very unusual sleep cycle; he would sleep in short amounts, but several times per day.
Interestingly, if you Google "leonardo da vinci sleep" the first result you get is an article on this concept: Polyphasic Sleep, which doesn't mention Leonardo anywhere. Apparently enough pages mentioning Leonardo link to that article to that it ranks #1, without even mentioning him itself.
I think the "robot programming" theme is a good one. I remember one of the first things that got me interested in programming was a toy rover that could be programmed to travel a certain distance, make turns, etc, in sequence. Then there is Logo, which is essentially a virtual version of the same thing plus the inclusion of a drawing function.
Here is something else I came across a few years ago which I always thought would be great and fun for teaching OOP programming fundamentals, Colobot, a game where you are an astronaut who must complete a variety of tasks using programmable robots. It covers a very wide range of difficulty from as simple as moving around and picking up objects, to as complex as automatic flight and targeting control for aerial combat. It uses a very C/Java-like syntax.
To use a cliche, it makes learning to program fun. You get immediate feedback on your program and see for yourself its results. Much more fun to code some robot to hunt down a bug and zap him, than some textbook-style exercises. I actually found it quite addicting when I first discovered it:)
It is quite a few years old now and should run on virtually anything (requires a 300Mhz Pentium and 16MB 3d chip).
"I get a little tired of hearing any little happening tied to human-produced global warming. Although I am all for cleaning up all manner of human pollution, it seems a little like Post Hoc to say that polar bears' drowning has anything to do with human activity."
OK, who exactly are you ranting against?
There is nothing in either TFA or the/. blurb which even HINTS that humans are the cause.
The argument presented is essentially:
1) Polar bears are drowning, because... 2) They have to swim farther, because... 3) The ice floes are more spread out, because... 4) The arctic is rapidly melting, because... 5) Temperatures are rising. No cause is mentioned for this.
Seems pretty solid, and does not mentions humans as a cause anywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for giving a straightforward answer, without being a jackass like the other two posters. Cheers.
Just to play devil's advocate...
What IF a black hole were created, which was actually stable for a length of time (as has recently been discussed), and it simply plunged towards the center of the earth, sucking up mass at an exponentially increasing rate as it went?
Can someone explain why that scenario is impossible (presuming the creation of a stable black hole that escapes the containment of the equipment)?
Indeed... Potential solution #2 to Fermi's Paradox.
I haven't read the actual paper, just the article and abstract, but I would think one could use "percentage of global population" instead of an absolute body count for global risk assessment purposes.
Well that's your opinion (and I know it's shared by many others) but I will respectfully disagree.
In T2, it is revealed that CyberDyne created SkyNet thanks to a chip from the future. This is a paradox. The "first time around", there would be no chip from the future, because CyberDyne hadn't created that future yet, because they hadn't received the chip, etc etc.
In T3, they elegantly resolved this paradox, by showing you how it WOULD have happened, "the first time around"... Connor becomes involved with the daughter of the guy responsible for SkyNet. That's how he learned about SkyNet, and how he survived the holocaust and was in a position to start organizing the resistance, originally, before all that tedious mucking about with time travel. Everything makes perfect sense now.
Nonsense. Just because Arnie said "It is inevitable" doesn't make it Absolute Fact. It's a frakin robot programmed by an evil AI, not the ultimate arbiter of cosmic wisdom. They got to the military base a few minutes too late to stop SkyNet from being switched on, that could have gone entirely differently.
So to sum up, you CAN change the future, and they did just that in T2... they prevented the whole "CyberDyne reverse-engineers chip from future" scenario.
Unfortunately, that was just a "shortcut" to accelerate the ORIGINAL development of SkyNet, which was by the military.
THAT scenario (military activates SkyNet) could be prevented too. They just simply didn't succeed.
So I don't feel like it took away from T2 at all, in fact I feel T3 enhanced and fleshed out the original story.
Plus, that truck chase was really cool. ;)
That's ridiculous. Cavemen didn't speak english.
The toner cartridge was very large, it probably could've included the drum. I wouldn't know how to tell the difference though. :)
Hear hear!
I have an ancient NEC Superscript 660i laser printer. I think I got it in '96 or so.
This thing is so old the only way to install the actual proper NEC drivers is to download FLOPPY DISK IMAGES and run them from 1.44MB discs.
It's so old they only have drivers for Win 3.1/9x, but that's OK because I can use a standard HP Laserjet 4p driver with it.
It's so old that the paper hopper is missing/broken, I am using a playing card as a paper guide, and I am holding the front panel in place with scotch tape.
But guess what? Damn thing still prints PERFECTLY after all these years, and I think I've replaced the toner only twice, and for 3 years or so it was used as a daily workhorse at a tech startup.
That being said, I do have an inkjet (Canon, more expensive up front than Epson but cheaper operating costs) I use when I really need colour.
That was the beginning of season 3. They blew a ton of their season budget on the escape from New Caprica, which is why the rest of the season 3 was pretty "boring" by comparison.
Things got interesting again at the end of S3 (Baltar's trial) and have stayed pretty good in S4, IMHO, and after the last episode it's looking like they've got a good yarn to spin to close the series off.
See also: How Lord of The Rings Should Have Ended.
[Frodo and Galdalf fly to Mt Doom on an eagle and drop the ring in]
"Well that was incredibly easy."
"Can you imagine what it would've been like if we had walked the entire way?"
I don't give a flying fig whether the people they "dissapear" are American Citizens(tm) or otherwise, and the fact you're hinging your argument on the distinction is telling.
Do you remember when the term "extraordinary rendition" was NOT part of the common vernacular?
From Wiki:
The two most important words in the above paragraph are "kidnapped" and "secret".
Oh, but these people aren't American Citizens, so who cares about their rights under Geneva, eh? If the govt says they're Bad Guys, that's good enough for me, no due process required.
For the record, I don't think the judge here will be "gitmo'd", and I think the OP's comment to that effect was tongue-in-cheek. But your apologist stance of "Gosh, they'd never do that to an AMERICAN" doesn't fly.
"First they came for the foreigners, and I said nothing, because I was not a foreigner".
Yeah, assuming politicians will abuse power is the exact same argument as assuming the existence of God. </sarcasm>
The entire concept of the US system of government (checks and balances, separation of powers, etc) is PREMISED on the assumption of politicians abusing power.
The FACT is, since 9/11, the US govt has been trying to assert the right to detain "enemy combatants" (which is vaguely defined) without legal recourse, or anyone even knowing about it. That is a cause of legitimate concern. "Gitmo'd" is just shorthand.
Well... don't be so hasty. Right now I have a secondary display running off of USB, and Wireless USB is a reality. Presto, a wireless display with existing off-the-shelf technology.
Now don't get me wrong, it's useless for gaming (no hardware accel), and when it has a lot of screen activity it eats a fair chunk of CPU (up to 25% of my Athlon 4600) to compress the video signal enough to squeeze into USB bandwidth, but for virtually all non-gaming applications it's perfectly fine.... and both of the problems I just mentioned could be addressed with a dedicated card in the box, instead of relying on a pure USB dongle.
And if a display can be run over wireless USB, there's certainly no obstacle for printers, mics, or any of the other things he mentions.
I do tend to agree with your general point though; most of what he nailed was fairly easy to spot from '99 trends.
"I like it how it is possible to add a torrent to the queue, then take a 3 hour train ride home and find it's all done for you. Magic."
Yes, "magic"... or just use Remote Desktop. ;)
You're just another global warming apologist. Oh SUUUURE... it's BITTORRENT causing all this melting...
Bill Clinton, is that you?
I disagree. Necessity is an objective and well defined term. Food, water, and oxygen are necessities of life. Javascript is a necessity for, say, a drop down menu working in IE6 due to lack of proper :hover support.
Something like client-side validation, however is not a necessity. According to your stated position, that means it should never be used. Period. But that's asinine, there's nothing wrong with client-side validation (for improved user experience, and reducing server hits) backed up by proper server-side validation (for security).
You seem to have a habit of making sweeping generalizations that fall completely apart under scrutiny. No technology should be used except for reasons of necessity? Really?
Ever used elevators or escalators when you could've taken stairs? Ever used a car, bike, or transit when you could've walked?
Ever use technology for entertainment purposes? Ever watched a movie? Played a video game? Surfed the web?
The fact is, we all use technology to make things more convenient and improve our quality of life on a daily basis, and much of it has nothing whatsoever to do with actual NECESSITY.
Heh, I hear you on the animation stuff. Took me a while to figure out why sliding menus were getting truncated when I came back to them... it's because stop()'ing the animation midway on mouseout doesn't reset the object to its start or end state, you have to do that yourself. (Which makes sense when you think about it, but this point could be documented a bit better)
The opening paragraph describes it as a popular cross-browser Javascript library. The rest of the review describes in detail what you can do with it.
You could also Google it and go to their homepage or Wiki article for more info.
It's a book review, not an article on jQuery. He provided plenty of context imho.
Your original post said, in no uncertain terms, NEVER USE JAVASCRIPT UNLESS YOU NEED TO. That was your main point, was it not?
Well I'm sorry but that's just wrong, there's nothing wrong with using Javascript to enhance the user experience, so long as it remains functional without it.
A better rule is: Never make your site DEPENDENT on Javascript unless you need to. Perhaps that's actually the point you were trying to make, but that's not how you phrased it.
Left4Dead (4-player zombie survival co-op, released yesterday by Valve) deserves a mention. While not exactly procedural "content", it is perhaps one of the first examples of "procedural gameplay" (at least in a modern shooter).
For those who don't know, Valve built an algorithmic "pacing engine" into L4D called the Director, which has complete control of what enemies and items you encounter.
What this means is that every playthrough is completely different and you never know what to expect. It's exhilarating and always keeps you on your toes.
More games need random and procedural stuff... forget about saving development effort, it leads to massive replayability. Look at Diablo, for example. I wish World of Goo had a procedural level generator. ;)
We studied this in Sociology when I was in university.
The gist was, it's all about social stigmas and pressures during critical years. Fact is, CS and Math are seen as "nerdy male" things, and girls (say, in high school) generally don't want to be seen in that light.
Nothing to do with innate biology or ability.
Legend has it that Leonardo da Vinci kept a very unusual sleep cycle; he would sleep in short amounts, but several times per day.
Interestingly, if you Google "leonardo da vinci sleep" the first result you get is an article on this concept: Polyphasic Sleep, which doesn't mention Leonardo anywhere. Apparently enough pages mentioning Leonardo link to that article to that it ranks #1, without even mentioning him itself.
"Netcraft confirms it, BSD [or other] is dying" is kind've a running joke around here (which is why OP is modded "funny").
It's pretty much a rubber-stamp troll post designed to elicit responses like... well exactly like your post. ;)
Read more about common Slashdot memes. And yes, you must memorize every single one before posting another byte to the hallowed halls of /. ;)
I think the "robot programming" theme is a good one. I remember one of the first things that got me interested in programming was a toy rover that could be programmed to travel a certain distance, make turns, etc, in sequence. Then there is Logo, which is essentially a virtual version of the same thing plus the inclusion of a drawing function.
Here is something else I came across a few years ago which I always thought would be great and fun for teaching OOP programming fundamentals, Colobot, a game where you are an astronaut who must complete a variety of tasks using programmable robots. It covers a very wide range of difficulty from as simple as moving around and picking up objects, to as complex as automatic flight and targeting control for aerial combat. It uses a very C/Java-like syntax.
To use a cliche, it makes learning to program fun. You get immediate feedback on your program and see for yourself its results. Much more fun to code some robot to hunt down a bug and zap him, than some textbook-style exercises. I actually found it quite addicting when I first discovered it :)
It is quite a few years old now and should run on virtually anything (requires a 300Mhz Pentium and 16MB 3d chip).
"I get a little tired of hearing any little happening tied to human-produced global warming. Although I am all for cleaning up all manner of human pollution, it seems a little like Post Hoc to say that polar bears' drowning has anything to do with human activity."
/. blurb which even HINTS that humans are the cause.
OK, who exactly are you ranting against?
There is nothing in either TFA or the
The argument presented is essentially:
1) Polar bears are drowning, because...
2) They have to swim farther, because...
3) The ice floes are more spread out, because...
4) The arctic is rapidly melting, because...
5) Temperatures are rising. No cause is mentioned for this.
Seems pretty solid, and does not mentions humans as a cause anywhere.