With a reputation as bad as Byers' is, it is entirely understandable that he would be paranoid enough to want to check that this wasn't another put-up job by whoever wanted to get rid of him. As far as I recall, although I haven't paid as much attention as I should have, the entire outcry was caused by a single leaked email that raised the question, not by any subsequent investigations that were carried out. If anything, this just goes to show how good at spinning Byers' enemies are. N.B. I do not support Stephen Byers. I think he is an amoral pillock. However, I do not think that a row over an internal email that was never (AFAIK) acted on, being intended only to cover their own back so that they didn't look like fools, is worthy of front-page column space.
Not sure either, but there would be a good argument that since the information comes from you in the first place, no matter what the implications, it's your data, so you should have access to it. It's not like it's being pulicised, as it is under FOIA, more like it's being returned to its original owner.
The problem with letting them get away with trying "impossible" things is that one day, they might succeed... Remember when heavier-than-air flight was impossible? Or sailing around the world?
If you can find copies and decent joysticks, X-Wing V Tie Fighter could well be the way to go. Enormous fun multi-player, and I can't imagine the kids not going for the Star Wars theme 8^) Also, just about any of the Descent series (not Freespace) would be intriguing - they are FPS, but different. My hand-eye and spatial coordination went up by a couple of orders of magnitude in the first fortnight after Descent 1 came out... The plus side of these games is that there are no real hardware requirements other than the joysticks - they'll run on pretty ancient stuff.
If you are claiming that something as insignificant and unnoticed as a butterfly flapping its wings can create such an enormous impact on something far away and apparently unrelated
Do I really have to point out what's wrong with this?
There's another point - they want reliable cashflow. That's why we're on this endless mill of manufactured pop. They know they can turn the handle and get another act out of the door with very little effort, and make enough out of them to do it again. They don't have to deal with unpredictable spikes from unreliable geniuses. With a regular lower income, they can probably make more money than by waiting for big hits. Little known fact: Virgin has made a net loss on Massive Attack.
I've seen quite a few posts about how ridiculous this is, but the IRA have been known to get involved in all of these. I'll post a reference as soon as I dig it up. This is all from a few years back, though - I don't know if they've scaled back recently or not.
I've just switched completely. Happened last Monday, in fact - I managed to trash my Windows partition, which left me with a 48 hour window to finish some coursework on a Mandrake 8.1 system. What followed was a quick traversal of the learning curves of vi, latex, WindowMaker and Rox on less than reliable hardware. Suffice to say, I am now not particularly impressed with either Mandrake or my hardware - I think I can now tell which of the two is at fault when something goes wrong. Now that I've got the exams out of the way, I'm thinking that big old "Why Bother?" question. Tomorrow, I'm rolling my own, having had bad experiences with pretty much every other distro out there. At least this way I'll know it's my fault when something fucks up.
MEMS != Nanotech. We're dealing with a couple of orders of magnitude in size difference. MEMS systems come in at the micrometer size, or thereabouts, nanotech stuff is - well, nanometers. Easy confusion to make, but nano is much scarier/powerful/difficult/expensive. With MEMS systems, it's comparatively easy to make quite involved mechanisms that can be designed classically, with a few weird bits thrown in. With nanotech, it's *all* weird bits.
Erm... Not necessarily. First, you've got to get the chip unharmed out of whatever packaging it's in. That can be made significantly difficult, not least in that you've got to make sure that the chip doesn't blow up at you.
Except that the specs for the hardware can be OS-neutral, but closed. Think like the Windows Secure Audio Path, or whatever it's called. IIRC, the hardware specs for compliance to that are closed, so no Linux drivers 8^(
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, 'cos I really don't like the idea of trying to reverse-engineer paranoid hardware.
Not here in the UK...
Thanks to the wonderful Mr Jack Straw, until recently of the Home Office, if the police ask you for a key to some encrypted material, you have to prove you don't have it. IANAL, but I think the wording of the bill could apply to random data for which there was no key.
I haven't seen this one suggested yet, so here we go...
While a steep learning curve can be a bad thing, I think that in this case you could use it to your advantage.
You could use a complex game, like StarCraft, but less well known. I believe FreeCiv was mentioned, but I don't know enough about it to be able to assess its suitability. Anyway, the main requirements of the game are that it should be complex, not too well known, and customisable Deep strategy would be desirable, but not essential. Anyway, the test would involve introducing the test subjects to the game, and giving them a week (or so) to familiarise themselves with the controls.
At the end of that week, you then throw them all in at the deep end (if it's a multiplayer game, then ideally against each other) on a new, custom map (or equivalent, if the game isn't map-based) that you can guarantee that none of the test subjects will have seen before.
How well each person does will be a measure of several things:
Their strategic ability (as opposed to rote learning ability) on the new map.
Their ability to learn a new methodology in the unfamiliar interface.
Competitiveness, if the final game is played as multiplayer, with all of the test subjects involved.
As far as I know, a game like StarCraft could fulfill this, as the week's learning time would even out the disparity between those familiar with the game, and those totally new to it. Maybe a week wouldn't be long enough, but that's the general idea.
HTH
Except you're spinning round 2 axes here. Plus you'd be so close to the center of rotation that the deformation of the mercury wouldn't be parabolic, 'cos that only happens (IIRC) in a perfectly parallel gravitational field. On Earth, we're far enough from Gravity Central not to have to worry about that, but on a spinning rig in space, where you couldn't realistically be more than 100m from the centre of rotation, that's going to be a real problem. The outward force is parallel in one dimension, but radial in another, so you don't even have rotational symmetry. I wouldn't be surprised if that really messed with the dynamics of the mercury. So (assuming the mercury is stable in its tank) you've got to not only mess with shutters and stuff (the actual exposure time being fractions of percents of the total revolution time - not great for quick results, but I suppose you could multitask many different pictures), but you've also got to include corrective optics for the aparabolic surface.
Not only that, but unless you're content to be able to only look in one plane, you've got the problem of turning a massive gyroscope about the wrong axis. Much, much energy expenditure required, either in slowing it down or just turning it at full speed.
Altogether, it doesn't strike me as a particularly useful plan, but no doubt I'm about to be corrected 8^)
But you do need to track what each individual user is doing, because the meanings will be different for each person that does the search. Sure, you can improve relevancy rankings per click-through, but one person's relevant result is going to be another's dross.
Yes you do. You assume that your existing model is entirely correct. Need I say more?
If you claim something and show me no evidence, I am a fool to believe it.
But you are also a fool if you completely discount the possibility that it might be true.
Besides, so what if NASA hasn't been able to replicate it - that doesn't make the original experiments invalid, all that it proves is that they haven't been able to replicate it. The original experimenter (AFAIK) had access to better ceramics manufacturing tech than the boys at NASA, so it would take a while to get up to speed.
Does the fact that NASA actually *tried* to replicate it not lend it any validity anyway? They aren't exactly known for their credulosity. But I digress.
those that are still willing to consider the possibility that a superconducting rotating disk has anti-grav powers are completely ignorant.
No, they're not. They are just open-minded, possessing a quality which seems to be sadly lacking in certain cases round here. If they blindly believed it, in the face of directly contradictory evidence, *then* they would be ignorant. Just being willing to consider a possibility does not make one a fool.
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With a reputation as bad as Byers' is, it is entirely understandable that he would be paranoid enough to want to check that this wasn't another put-up job by whoever wanted to get rid of him. As far as I recall, although I haven't paid as much attention as I should have, the entire outcry was caused by a single leaked email that raised the question, not by any subsequent investigations that were carried out. If anything, this just goes to show how good at spinning Byers' enemies are.
N.B. I do not support Stephen Byers. I think he is an amoral pillock. However, I do not think that a row over an internal email that was never (AFAIK) acted on, being intended only to cover their own back so that they didn't look like fools, is worthy of front-page column space.
Not sure either, but there would be a good argument that since the information comes from you in the first place, no matter what the implications, it's your data, so you should have access to it. It's not like it's being pulicised, as it is under FOIA, more like it's being returned to its original owner.
How many checkmate positions are there, and are they all reachable with legal moves?
I know I'll support people that throw parties like that every few decades...
The problem with letting them get away with trying "impossible" things is that one day, they might succeed...
Remember when heavier-than-air flight was impossible? Or sailing around the world?
If you can find copies and decent joysticks, X-Wing V Tie Fighter could well be the way to go. Enormous fun multi-player, and I can't imagine the kids not going for the Star Wars theme 8^)
Also, just about any of the Descent series (not Freespace) would be intriguing - they are FPS, but different. My hand-eye and spatial coordination went up by a couple of orders of magnitude in the first fortnight after Descent 1 came out...
The plus side of these games is that there are no real hardware requirements other than the joysticks - they'll run on pretty ancient stuff.
Do I really have to point out what's wrong with this?
Bear in mind that this nearly didn't happen.
There's another point - they want reliable cashflow. That's why we're on this endless mill of manufactured pop. They know they can turn the handle and get another act out of the door with very little effort, and make enough out of them to do it again. They don't have to deal with unpredictable spikes from unreliable geniuses. With a regular lower income, they can probably make more money than by waiting for big hits. Little known fact: Virgin has made a net loss on Massive Attack.
I've seen quite a few posts about how ridiculous this is, but the IRA have been known to get involved in all of these. I'll post a reference as soon as I dig it up. This is all from a few years back, though - I don't know if they've scaled back recently or not.
He's done bits too his minimoog too, so I've heard. It's completely sacreligious, but it's him, so it's ok.
I've just switched completely. Happened last Monday, in fact - I managed to trash my Windows partition, which left me with a 48 hour window to finish some coursework on a Mandrake 8.1 system. What followed was a quick traversal of the learning curves of vi, latex, WindowMaker and Rox on less than reliable hardware. Suffice to say, I am now not particularly impressed with either Mandrake or my hardware - I think I can now tell which of the two is at fault when something goes wrong. Now that I've got the exams out of the way, I'm thinking that big old "Why Bother?" question. Tomorrow, I'm rolling my own, having had bad experiences with pretty much every other distro out there. At least this way I'll know it's my fault when something fucks up.
MEMS != Nanotech. We're dealing with a couple of orders of magnitude in size difference. MEMS systems come in at the micrometer size, or thereabouts, nanotech stuff is - well, nanometers. Easy confusion to make, but nano is much scarier/powerful/difficult/expensive. With MEMS systems, it's comparatively easy to make quite involved mechanisms that can be designed classically, with a few weird bits thrown in. With nanotech, it's *all* weird bits.
Funny thing is, colour photocopiers have to be designed to be bad at reproducing the colours used on money 8^(
At least in the UK, anyway...
Oh, for mod points!
ROTFL!
Erm... Not necessarily. First, you've got to get the chip unharmed out of whatever packaging it's in. That can be made significantly difficult, not least in that you've got to make sure that the chip doesn't blow up at you.
Except that the specs for the hardware can be OS-neutral, but closed. Think like the Windows Secure Audio Path, or whatever it's called. IIRC, the hardware specs for compliance to that are closed, so no Linux drivers 8^(
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, 'cos I really don't like the idea of trying to reverse-engineer paranoid hardware.
AFAICR, the first underwater camera was actually invented for Thunderball - Sean Connery at his very best 8^)
Not here in the UK...
Thanks to the wonderful Mr Jack Straw, until recently of the Home Office, if the police ask you for a key to some encrypted material, you have to prove you don't have it. IANAL, but I think the wording of the bill could apply to random data for which there was no key.
While a steep learning curve can be a bad thing, I think that in this case you could use it to your advantage.
You could use a complex game, like StarCraft, but less well known. I believe FreeCiv was mentioned, but I don't know enough about it to be able to assess its suitability. Anyway, the main requirements of the game are that it should be complex, not too well known, and customisable Deep strategy would be desirable, but not essential. Anyway, the test would involve introducing the test subjects to the game, and giving them a week (or so) to familiarise themselves with the controls.
At the end of that week, you then throw them all in at the deep end (if it's a multiplayer game, then ideally against each other) on a new, custom map (or equivalent, if the game isn't map-based) that you can guarantee that none of the test subjects will have seen before.
How well each person does will be a measure of several things:
As far as I know, a game like StarCraft could fulfill this, as the week's learning time would even out the disparity between those familiar with the game, and those totally new to it. Maybe a week wouldn't be long enough, but that's the general idea.
HTH
Yeah, but the watermark is still detectable in the mp3, because the watermark probably isn't removed.
Depending on the watermark, it could even survive a D-A/A-D process.
Except you're spinning round 2 axes here. Plus you'd be so close to the center of rotation that the deformation of the mercury wouldn't be parabolic, 'cos that only happens (IIRC) in a perfectly parallel gravitational field. On Earth, we're far enough from Gravity Central not to have to worry about that, but on a spinning rig in space, where you couldn't realistically be more than 100m from the centre of rotation, that's going to be a real problem. The outward force is parallel in one dimension, but radial in another, so you don't even have rotational symmetry. I wouldn't be surprised if that really messed with the dynamics of the mercury. So (assuming the mercury is stable in its tank) you've got to not only mess with shutters and stuff (the actual exposure time being fractions of percents of the total revolution time - not great for quick results, but I suppose you could multitask many different pictures), but you've also got to include corrective optics for the aparabolic surface.
Not only that, but unless you're content to be able to only look in one plane, you've got the problem of turning a massive gyroscope about the wrong axis. Much, much energy expenditure required, either in slowing it down or just turning it at full speed.
Altogether, it doesn't strike me as a particularly useful plan, but no doubt I'm about to be corrected 8^)
But you do need to track what each individual user is doing, because the meanings will be different for each person that does the search. Sure, you can improve relevancy rankings per click-through, but one person's relevant result is going to be another's dross.
You probably shouldn't fuck them, then.
Yes you do. You assume that your existing model is entirely correct. Need I say more?
If you claim something and show me no evidence, I am a fool to believe it.
But you are also a fool if you completely discount the possibility that it might be true.
Besides, so what if NASA hasn't been able to replicate it - that doesn't make the original experiments invalid, all that it proves is that they haven't been able to replicate it. The original experimenter (AFAIK) had access to better ceramics manufacturing tech than the boys at NASA, so it would take a while to get up to speed.
Does the fact that NASA actually *tried* to replicate it not lend it any validity anyway? They aren't exactly known for their credulosity. But I digress.
those that are still willing to consider the possibility that a superconducting rotating disk has anti-grav powers are completely ignorant.No, they're not. They are just open-minded, possessing a quality which seems to be sadly lacking in certain cases round here. If they blindly believed it, in the face of directly contradictory evidence, *then* they would be ignorant. Just being willing to consider a possibility does not make one a fool.