I got introduced to programming via Advanced T-Robots, actually. Similar, but assembly-like code.
But no, programminggames have moved on since P-Robots. Not much. Depressingly little, actually. But there is only the hazy genre link between this pacman AI competition and P-robots.
I don't mind copyright as such when I buy say a paperback book. The author wrote it, whatever deals good or bad he did with the publisher is not my problem, and he charges a price per copy. I buy my copy and that copy is mine, end of story. No DRM, no regions, no EULA, no licensed player that won't let me flip several pages at once (no fast forward), no disappearing ink pages that'll be gone if I resell it (one-time codes), I can sell it, burn it, make paper planes of it and it's a straight deal in every way except for the few limited rights actually in copyright law.
No search, no backup, physical storage medium means lugging it around, and most of the cash you spend on it DOESN'T go to the author. I prefer directly downloading the pdf. If the author has a system, that's great, if not, I'm ok with getting it where ever and sending the author a buck anyway. My preferred DRM system is guilt.
Ah yes, I remember the good ol' days 'fore we had them thar tornadoes. And the road was paved in gold. And taxes were rock bottom.
There have always been tornadoes, and always will be, and long as the world turns with an atmosphere. So this just kinda leaped out at me as being split-second sensationalism trying to capitalize on the raw emotions of recent tragedy. This guy can DIAF. Or a raging tornado.
The problem with that lesson is that kids LIVE off of free handouts... from their parents. It's perfectly normal and a long established process of life. If you append that to "TANSTAFL, except when I do it", that's kind of the basis of hypocrisy. And if you go too far, you wind up with "trust no one, but you and yours" and that's full fledged bigotry. Raising kids is hard.
True, it takes a particularly smart kid to question the logical fallacy of someone advising them never to trust advice (or one that's seen Indiana Jones), but you'd have to hope that somewhere deep inside their noggin they're developing a worldview.
Yeah yeah, not past 30. Well aware. According to "the big plan" kids are supposed to be about now. We've got a big trip planned abroad and then.. I guess... it's baby time.
Honestly, I'm scared shitless. I fear change, and this is about as big as they come.
He's talking about computer science, as in scientists with goggles and lab coats in a lab. (The coats are a fashion statement). Unfortunately, he doesn't recognize that not all CS students go on to grad school, professorship, and/or R&D positions. Indeed those seem to be the extreme minority. We honestly DO NEED something like a trade school for programmers. People that can take current, known, stable technology and apply it to make a buck. And that trade school is known as India right now. They have a lot of good programmers, but their software engineering program could do more.
Over here, if you want to learn how to do things, you go into engineering.
Shrug. I'm 27 and I paid off my college loan a long time ago. I'm also a little past half-way paying off the house loan. So I'm not sure what you're talking about.
Of course, I had scholarships, didn't go Ivy, got a CompE degree, married an engineer, and we haven't had kids yet. Which is a pretty smart way to go, moneywise.
Maybe if you weren't so anti-intellectual you'd have learned something useful in college along with that worthless philosophy degree. Of course, you have to be a little knowledgeable about the world to realize that when signing up for classes. They kinda expected you to pick this stuff up in the two decades prior.
Honestly though, a lot of college-kids would do well to take a remedial class along the lines of HOW TO FEED YOURSELF POST SCHOOL 101.
But operagost's stats are similar to what we have in Georgia... I could send my kids to a local private school for less than $7k/year. The city of Atlanta, however, spends over $13k/year. The suburbs vary greatly... the metro area is quite large, but the average in GA is something like $8k.
For some strange reason, the areas that spend the least have the lowest dropout rates and the highest average grades.
The cost of living is higher in cities. Same goes for cost of operating as school. There's more reasons to drop out too. In rural farmville, there isn't much to do. Of course, the education in rural schools is traditionally not as good as in larger areas. So the drop-out rate may not be the best metric. How about college acceptance? Or wages 10 years later?
Also, anything big is going to have waste. If all of Georgia switched to private baptist schools with vouchers, they'd form organizations and be just as wasteful. Government, Corporations, Associations, Parties, Organizations, whatever label floats your boat. The bigger it is, the less lean and efficient it is. Or its a disorganized decentralized mess. That said, a constant effort is needed to trim waste and throw out the garbage. Like these sports programs. Holy COW is this all a giant waste of time, effort, and cash.
You've left me no choice. I'm deploying the nuclear option. Here we go.
So would you rather be paying for solar $7 per watt or $1 per watt (which is what solar cells are expected to hit in a few years)?
So you see, the entire joke hinges on the slight deliberate misinterpretation that you're asking which we would want, $7/watt now, or $1/watt in a few years. I run with that and say that no, I don't invest in futures and stay away from speculative markets. Which shows that I'm referring to your $1/watt prediction that doesn't yet exist. The humor lies in the misinterpretation that turns out to be true. Some of this is reference humor, as Slashdot has a story about revolutionary solar tech every month or so. You have to remember to play to the crowd.
And now that the joke has had the very last drop of humor squeezed out of it and rendered down into a biodiesel alternative fuel, let us lay it to rest and never speak of it again.
Except for the part where he never mentioned aiming for the head...
Also, supressors are pretty heavily regulated, and Zuckerburg in California is outright banned from owning one. At least if he wants to have some beef stroganoff in-state.
But really. Step #3: Cattle are rendered unconscious by applying an electric shock of 300 volts and 2 amps to the back of the head, effectively stunning the animal,[7] or by use of a captive bolt pistol to the front of the cow's head (a pneumatic or cartridge-fired captive bolt). Swine can be rendered unconscious by CO2/inert gas stunning.
That is a fantastic post. Highly insightful. A+, would read again. I never really understood where the leap from QM to classical physics happened. And your post gave me some more insight into the nature of it. Anyone feel free to correct me if I'm screwing this up:
So here's the thing about quantum mechanics, it averages out as you get bigger. Take a fair die. Roll it, and you'll get something between 1 and 6. Each value just as likely as any other. Random. Roll 2d6, and you'll get anything between 2 and 12. But 7 will be the most likely roll. 1+6, 3+4, and 6+1 all equal 7, but only 1+1 equal 2. This is probabilistic. Roll 100 dice and you'll likely get a number around 350, plus or minus a few, say, 20%. Roll 1,000,000 dice and you'll get around 3,500,000, plus or minus a few thousand, or 0.1%.
As you stack up random actions and they average each other out, the uncertainty is reduced and you shift from a random act, to a probabilistic one, and it approaches a deterministic act, but never quite gets there.
But I have to question a couple parts of your post. First off, you say there's no one thing that happens at a cellular level that is small enough to be affected by QM. Good to know. But it doesn't matter. Lessons from the butterfly effect show that if you introduce even slight differences into a sensitive system, the outcome can be grossly different. Like the exact time a neuron fires or the creation of a tornado. So even though the uncertainty gets diminished with size, the ultimate outcome is still probabilistic. Hmmmm, I guess I'm just assuming that the brain is a complex and sensetive system like weather though.
And second, while I get what you're saying about a probabilistic universe not really leading to free-will, it at least tears down the concept of fate. And most people see a dichotomy between free-will and fate.
The speculation that society isn't going to crumble apart in a few years is a pretty safe bet.
Taking your view, BREATHING is speculative that life is going to be worth living in a few minutes.
Seriously though, "market speculation" means something. Like buying futures. It's one of those stock-trading terms. The need for power plants is pretty solid, and I'd like to encourage solar power and new power storage technology. Deal with it.
Yes, I really would rather pay $7 per watt today then invest $1 in electricity futures. I don't play the stock market and I stay the hell away from market speculation.
But please don't try to tear down solar, wind, hydro, oil, gas, and coal power on the way there. There is no silver bullet or one singular solution to our power needs. Duh.
You need to give this matter some additional thought.
1) See that "/m2"? It matters. Space is cheap. Maybe you live in a city or something where this would be infeasible, but in wide-open Nevada, it's not an issue.
2) Or three mile island. But only Chernobyl should be considered "catastrophic". Meltdowns are bad, and expensive, but the worst of it seems to be the fear.
3) No. You did not just say that nuclear plants have simple designs. I didn't read that right. Surely, I must be mistaken.
4) Breeder reactors can use a variety of more abundant fuels, but they're not magic. You still have to fuel them. Similarly, I believe this solar plant needs a supply of salt, however small.
5) Yes, it call comes down to profit. But employing engineers is still a cost. Honestly though, every power plant, nuclear or solar, is going to have engineers. This point of contention is silly.
6) Nuclear has a number of drawbacks, the same way that it has a number of positive traits. There is the waste issue, the public fear (which is a real and serious problem), the potential to catastrophically fail, a history of cost overruns (which is a side-effect of trying to be "cutting edge"), and the plants dislike changing their power output to meet demand. Nuclear is also very environmentally friendly, has the potential to be very cost effective, we can get fuel from Canada rather then oil despots, and you can put it on a boat.
You have to approach the issue from a calm and rational perspective. If you go about ignoring these things, then all you do is appear to be a zealot and diminish nuclear power.
There is no one solitary thing that is going to be the solution. We will use a variety of power generation methods. Anyone who is trying to sell you a silver bullet needs to be ignored.
Slashdot Mirror
I got introduced to programming via Advanced T-Robots, actually. Similar, but assembly-like code.
But no, programming games have moved on since P-Robots. Not much. Depressingly little, actually. But there is only the hazy genre link between this pacman AI competition and P-robots.
Can we have a +1 Sage Elder Wisdom?
I don't mind copyright as such when I buy say a paperback book. The author wrote it, whatever deals good or bad he did with the publisher is not my problem, and he charges a price per copy. I buy my copy and that copy is mine, end of story. No DRM, no regions, no EULA, no licensed player that won't let me flip several pages at once (no fast forward), no disappearing ink pages that'll be gone if I resell it (one-time codes), I can sell it, burn it, make paper planes of it and it's a straight deal in every way except for the few limited rights actually in copyright law.
No search, no backup, physical storage medium means lugging it around, and most of the cash you spend on it DOESN'T go to the author. I prefer directly downloading the pdf. If the author has a system, that's great, if not, I'm ok with getting it where ever and sending the author a buck anyway. My preferred DRM system is guilt.
... tornados plowed through cities, ...
Ah yes, I remember the good ol' days 'fore we had them thar tornadoes. And the road was paved in gold. And taxes were rock bottom.
There have always been tornadoes, and always will be, and long as the world turns with an atmosphere. So this just kinda leaped out at me as being split-second sensationalism trying to capitalize on the raw emotions of recent tragedy. This guy can DIAF. Or a raging tornado.
Also, "tornadoes" has an 'e'. A Pulitzer eh?
The problem with that lesson is that kids LIVE off of free handouts... from their parents. It's perfectly normal and a long established process of life. If you append that to "TANSTAFL, except when I do it", that's kind of the basis of hypocrisy. And if you go too far, you wind up with "trust no one, but you and yours" and that's full fledged bigotry. Raising kids is hard.
True, it takes a particularly smart kid to question the logical fallacy of someone advising them never to trust advice (or one that's seen Indiana Jones), but you'd have to hope that somewhere deep inside their noggin they're developing a worldview.
Into the sun?
. . .and why would that be?
...IBM just showed up sorta out of the blue...
I see what you did there.
Yeah yeah, not past 30. Well aware. According to "the big plan" kids are supposed to be about now. We've got a big trip planned abroad and then.. I guess... it's baby time.
Honestly, I'm scared shitless. I fear change, and this is about as big as they come.
If only we had a way to distinguish between TRUE geeks and these false imposters!
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GCS/GE@ d>d- s:+ a- C++$ L++ W+ K w$ PS+(+++) PE(-) Y+ PGP(GPG) t(+) 5+ X- R+ tv-- b(+) DI(+) D+ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++
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He's talking about computer science, as in scientists with goggles and lab coats in a lab. (The coats are a fashion statement). Unfortunately, he doesn't recognize that not all CS students go on to grad school, professorship, and/or R&D positions. Indeed those seem to be the extreme minority. We honestly DO NEED something like a trade school for programmers. People that can take current, known, stable technology and apply it to make a buck. And that trade school is known as India right now. They have a lot of good programmers, but their software engineering program could do more.
Over here, if you want to learn how to do things, you go into engineering.
Shrug. I'm 27 and I paid off my college loan a long time ago. I'm also a little past half-way paying off the house loan. So I'm not sure what you're talking about.
Of course, I had scholarships, didn't go Ivy, got a CompE degree, married an engineer, and we haven't had kids yet. Which is a pretty smart way to go, moneywise.
Maybe if you weren't so anti-intellectual you'd have learned something useful in college along with that worthless philosophy degree. Of course, you have to be a little knowledgeable about the world to realize that when signing up for classes. They kinda expected you to pick this stuff up in the two decades prior.
Honestly though, a lot of college-kids would do well to take a remedial class along the lines of HOW TO FEED YOURSELF POST SCHOOL 101.
Because they fired all those guys and threw out the props years ago.
But operagost's stats are similar to what we have in Georgia... I could send my kids to a local private school for less than $7k/year. The city of Atlanta, however, spends over $13k/year. The suburbs vary greatly... the metro area is quite large, but the average in GA is something like $8k.
For some strange reason, the areas that spend the least have the lowest dropout rates and the highest average grades.
The cost of living is higher in cities. Same goes for cost of operating as school. There's more reasons to drop out too. In rural farmville, there isn't much to do. Of course, the education in rural schools is traditionally not as good as in larger areas. So the drop-out rate may not be the best metric. How about college acceptance? Or wages 10 years later?
Also, anything big is going to have waste. If all of Georgia switched to private baptist schools with vouchers, they'd form organizations and be just as wasteful. Government, Corporations, Associations, Parties, Organizations, whatever label floats your boat. The bigger it is, the less lean and efficient it is. Or its a disorganized decentralized mess. That said, a constant effort is needed to trim waste and throw out the garbage. Like these sports programs. Holy COW is this all a giant waste of time, effort, and cash.
The voucher program idea has a lot of merit. If only it wasn't a smoke screen to funnel cash into the Catholic church.
So would you rather be paying for solar $7 per watt or $1 per watt (which is what solar cells are expected to hit in a few years)?
So you see, the entire joke hinges on the slight deliberate misinterpretation that you're asking which we would want, $7/watt now, or $1/watt in a few years. I run with that and say that no, I don't invest in futures and stay away from speculative markets. Which shows that I'm referring to your $1/watt prediction that doesn't yet exist. The humor lies in the misinterpretation that turns out to be true. Some of this is reference humor, as Slashdot has a story about revolutionary solar tech every month or so. You have to remember to play to the crowd.
And now that the joke has had the very last drop of humor squeezed out of it and rendered down into a biodiesel alternative fuel, let us lay it to rest and never speak of it again.
R.I.P.
Except for the part where he never mentioned aiming for the head...
Also, supressors are pretty heavily regulated, and Zuckerburg in California is outright banned from owning one. At least if he wants to have some beef stroganoff in-state.
But really. Step #3: Cattle are rendered unconscious by applying an electric shock of 300 volts and 2 amps to the back of the head, effectively stunning the animal,[7] or by use of a captive bolt pistol to the front of the cow's head (a pneumatic or cartridge-fired captive bolt). Swine can be rendered unconscious by CO2/inert gas stunning.
That is a fantastic post. Highly insightful. A+, would read again. I never really understood where the leap from QM to classical physics happened. And your post gave me some more insight into the nature of it. Anyone feel free to correct me if I'm screwing this up:
So here's the thing about quantum mechanics, it averages out as you get bigger. Take a fair die. Roll it, and you'll get something between 1 and 6. Each value just as likely as any other. Random. Roll 2d6, and you'll get anything between 2 and 12. But 7 will be the most likely roll. 1+6, 3+4, and 6+1 all equal 7, but only 1+1 equal 2. This is probabilistic. Roll 100 dice and you'll likely get a number around 350, plus or minus a few, say, 20%. Roll 1,000,000 dice and you'll get around 3,500,000, plus or minus a few thousand, or 0.1%.
As you stack up random actions and they average each other out, the uncertainty is reduced and you shift from a random act, to a probabilistic one, and it approaches a deterministic act, but never quite gets there.
But I have to question a couple parts of your post. First off, you say there's no one thing that happens at a cellular level that is small enough to be affected by QM. Good to know. But it doesn't matter. Lessons from the butterfly effect show that if you introduce even slight differences into a sensitive system, the outcome can be grossly different. Like the exact time a neuron fires or the creation of a tornado. So even though the uncertainty gets diminished with size, the ultimate outcome is still probabilistic. Hmmmm, I guess I'm just assuming that the brain is a complex and sensetive system like weather though.
And second, while I get what you're saying about a probabilistic universe not really leading to free-will, it at least tears down the concept of fate. And most people see a dichotomy between free-will and fate.
If you were referring to market speculation, then you should have said so.
"...then invest $1 in electricity futures. I don't play the stock market and I stay the hell away from market speculation."
DATS DA JOKE.
The speculation that society isn't going to crumble apart in a few years is a pretty safe bet.
Taking your view, BREATHING is speculative that life is going to be worth living in a few minutes.
Seriously though, "market speculation" means something. Like buying futures. It's one of those stock-trading terms. The need for power plants is pretty solid, and I'd like to encourage solar power and new power storage technology. Deal with it.
Yes, I really would rather pay $7 per watt today then invest $1 in electricity futures. I don't play the stock market and I stay the hell away from market speculation.
Yeah, thorium is cool.
But please don't try to tear down solar, wind, hydro, oil, gas, and coal power on the way there. There is no silver bullet or one singular solution to our power needs. Duh.
You need to give this matter some additional thought.
1) See that "/m2"? It matters. Space is cheap. Maybe you live in a city or something where this would be infeasible, but in wide-open Nevada, it's not an issue.
2) Or three mile island. But only Chernobyl should be considered "catastrophic". Meltdowns are bad, and expensive, but the worst of it seems to be the fear.
3) No. You did not just say that nuclear plants have simple designs. I didn't read that right. Surely, I must be mistaken.
4) Breeder reactors can use a variety of more abundant fuels, but they're not magic. You still have to fuel them. Similarly, I believe this solar plant needs a supply of salt, however small.
5) Yes, it call comes down to profit. But employing engineers is still a cost. Honestly though, every power plant, nuclear or solar, is going to have engineers. This point of contention is silly.
6) Nuclear has a number of drawbacks, the same way that it has a number of positive traits. There is the waste issue, the public fear (which is a real and serious problem), the potential to catastrophically fail, a history of cost overruns (which is a side-effect of trying to be "cutting edge"), and the plants dislike changing their power output to meet demand. Nuclear is also very environmentally friendly, has the potential to be very cost effective, we can get fuel from Canada rather then oil despots, and you can put it on a boat.
You have to approach the issue from a calm and rational perspective. If you go about ignoring these things, then all you do is appear to be a zealot and diminish nuclear power.
There is no one solitary thing that is going to be the solution. We will use a variety of power generation methods. Anyone who is trying to sell you a silver bullet needs to be ignored.