There are lots of effective ways to get the Earth to reflect more sunlight, like smokestacks that pump ash into the atmosphere. Google global dimming. It's what's keeping the earth's temperatures from spiking catastrophically.
Cool, the satellite picture puts the scale into perspective. There is a whole lot of empty space in that chunk of Nevada. They could build 1000 plants like that in the immediate vicinity and nobody would notice!
By putting the word 'pedantic' in quotes, it is clear you are mentioning the word, not using the word. Look up the use-mention distinction. So, 'pedantic' most certainly is an adjective. Saying that the word 'pedantic' is an adjective is just redundant.
I would love to see this in an arcade. I'd pay a dollar to play the arm - bring on the 32bit mode! If they could make the arm fold itself out of the way while two people are playing, this would make an excellent arcade machine.
What's more, if the arms were standard and mass-produced, there's a great excuse for a little coding competition: Whose program will win when it's robot v. robot?
Lots of cool AI, artificial learning and computer vision would go into it, and the result would no doubt be fun to watch!
I'm pretty allured by these things, but I sort of had my heart set on playing with an OLPC machine. I just love the idea, and who knows, I thought I might find something in the software to help develop or improve.
If AMD can't put out a competitor to Atom, I hope Negroponte decides to go with Intel for the next version of OLPC. I also hope that high volumes could get the prices even lower than $600. But... yeah, I'm definitely intrigued.
I think this will happen: For one thing, this will only work with expensive set-top DVR boxes provided by the cable company - they will be the only things able to decode the DRM. This means that aftermarket DVRs will be second-class citizens, consolidating the control of the cable companies.
I'm not sure how relasing movies in HD before the DVD release will benefit the movie houses though. You know that there will be HD-rips from day one on the internet, and once they circulate, who'll want to rent the comparatively ugly DVD... weeks later, and for money? Do they really have so much faith in their DRM? I don't!
How close are we to being able to leave out X?
on
The State of X.Org
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I know that to run Qt on Linux, and so by extension KDE, you don't even need X windows. I had the impression that smart devices with linux under Qt already exit. Instead of rebuilding the beastly X from scratch, wouldn't it be better to just enhance and optimize Qt so that it's able to run X-less on a naked kernel?
So much work is duplicated between X and Qt, like the anti-aliasing engine. Now I admit that I don't know this stuff well and never worked on this sort of code. That's why the title of my post is a question. However, I'm very interested the answer!
Yeah, you can do that, but you'll have a $475 locked phone. What are you gonna do with that? Most likely, you'll get an illegal unlock, but then you'll want contract with some provider. Since it's an iPhone, you'll want a data plan as well as a voice plan... and market rates for that are about $80+ per month. So you bought out your contract... why?
AT&T isn't exactly cheap, but their plans are not out of bounds of the market rates. Seems like the smart thing to do is to just stay with AT&T, enjoy your warranty and feel safe that a stealth update won't brick your phone.
Excellent post. I agree completely: Once we have an abundant source of power on the moon, all kinds of automated manufacturing techniques will come online, and we can use lunar resources to manufacture solar cells, parts for a proper (giant, rotating) space station, a giant space telescope, and spaceships that actually could bring permanent colonists to Mars.
Pieces for all those projects could be made on the moon, rail-gunned into orbit and assebled there. The key to getting this lunar operation off the ground will be sufficient electricity, and you're right, fission is what will provide it.
so you think we should start the project immediately, before we know what to do?
I've had project managers like you... Umm, do you know what "research" is? It is the investigation of something hitherto unknown for the purpose of coming to know it. Sometimes research is a good idea!
Finally, a sensible post! But I'd like to add something.
You said we'd be building big, heavy stuff in factories on the moon. Yes, that's the right goal to aim at. But what will that "stuff" be? Not construction beams for a new lunar suburbia. They will be parts for space stations, space telescopes, spaceships, and all kinds of other stuff that we will want in orbit. Why should that stuff be made on the moon? Well, because all the raw resources are there, because automated manufacturing there should be feasible, and because it will be very easy to launch heavy things into orbit from the moon: With such low gravity and essentially no atmosphere, things can be launched with a simple railgun.
I don't think it will be so great to live on the moon, with all that nasty dust and weak gravity. I say we should cover the moon with solar panels and maybe some fission reactors, and use all that energy for smelting lunar ore, both precious and ordinary. There is no end to the usefulness of the satellites we can make from raw materials on the moon. One of those things: photovoltaic cells which we could railgun into geosynchronous Earth orbit to generate clean power for us. Another thing we need in orbit are big construction pieces from which we could build a large, rotating and mostly self-sufficient space station. That's where we should live - in orbit (maybe at a liberation point), not on the stupid moon.
Also, try to imagine assembling segments of a gigantic (as in 100+ meter) metallic mirror in lunar orbit. The resulting telescope could actually resolve exoplanets!
That's what we should be doing on the moon! Of course, before all that is possible we still need to take steps to refine our technology of automated manufacturing, and we don't need to be on the moon to do a lot of that work. But we do need to learn about the special conditions there, like issues having to do with the dust, the diversity of the geology, the feasibility of certain smelting techniques, the optimal design of nuclear powerplants for the moon, etc. (Yes, the first operations must be powered by fission, get over it. It's the fucking moon.)
Yup, exactly what I was thinking. Of course, if I spent the $10,000 on drinks I let someone else distill, I'd probably be better off. But you're right, in a frat house this device could pay for itself in two years!
Yea, I got that, but the fact that this is feasible for offices now means that homes could use the same technology in the near future. There are some "normal" homes in Sweden that already get 100MB internet, which is enough for streaming HD, but not enough for many other things we will eventually come up with. So I was wondering whether there will ever be an "enough" level to the home. For a business like Google, "enough" might only be: the sum of all user bandwidths in the world. But for users, will there be a plateau?
Stories like this always make me think of the following:
I can't think of anyone who's longing to get a fatter gas pipe connected to their house, or a fatter pipe to municipal water, or a cable of higher capacity to bring in more electricity.
But we're not like that with bandwidth. We always seem to want a fatter pipe of bandwidth! Will it forever be like that? Is the household bandwidth consumption ever going to plateau, like electric, gas and water consumption has in the US? (I know that global demand for these utilities is growing, but that's mainly because there are more people and a larger proportion are being hooked up to municipal utilities. The per-household numbers are not really changing very much, and in some cases decreasing.)
Will there be a plateau in bandwidth demand? If so, when and at what level? Thoughts?
It's not that vertical monopolies "fell out of favor" - they were instead regulated out of existence. Net neutrality would have been a regulation that discourages vertical monopolies in data delivery. However, it seems to have failed.
The result is that data providers are now at the mercy of pipe providers. Without net neutrality, it will pay to be a pipe provider. You can extort fees from data providers so that they have access to users at the end of the pipes.
What I foresee is the return of free ISPs, and maybe Google will be one of them. They will pay for all that (probably wireless) infrastructure through deals with data providers who want access to all the people who connect to the internet through Google. The laws allow "pay to play" and that's how Google would be paid for providing their ISP service. I think this could work and I want it to happen, because US ISP's are dicks and they deserve to die.
I feel like I have to object to this characterization of atheism a bit. While I agree that many and even most atheists happen to feel passionately about various political and social causes (tending to be humanists and very concerned with improving human well-being), I think this ideological opinion doesn't have many analogies with religion.
For one thing, it does not compete with religion, and many strongly religious people (in every major religious tradition) have the same humanistic convictions and take their religion to support their humanism (and vice versa). The same goes for a belief in the results and methods of science: This belief does not crowd out religious belief, and most educated religious people in the West believe in science just as much as atheists do. Ditto for environmentalism and all the other ism's you mention.
You're right that various humanistic movements are organized, but so are chess clubs, national elections and universities. Belonging to an organized religion prevents membership in another organized religion (unless you're Japanese, who seem to have no problem with accepting several religions simultaneously), but it certainly does not prevent membership in another, non-religous organized movement.
I just want it to be clear that humanistic endeavors like the fight against poverty, for environmental conservation, for global justice, etc. are nothing like religions. Religion is a different sort of thing.
Atheists simply don't have a religion. What makes them atheists is that in them, any belief that gods of any sort exist, is absent. This does not force them to put their "faith" in any other movement in particular. I mean, to some extent, every human being with normal, human compassion has some sort of humanistic ideals. But again, that's just a result of being a moral and empathetic person, and it happens to moral people whether or not they have any faith in various gods.
No, good bomb designs are not freely available. Designs for compact devices with high yields are most definitely not available, take a great deal of work and inspiration, and would be coveted by many countries around the world. The most significant row about Chinese espionage involved the alleged theft of one of these modern designs.
As much as I'm a fan of open source things, I don't want the W88 thermonuclear warhead design to be posted to the internet. That thing is surely easier to build than it is to design, and I think too many have been built already.
They save billions in getting the tech to that point. Now they have a "working" system that they can use as a model.
You're calling the space shuttle a "working" system? If we want to make sure the Chinese don't beat us in the space race, we convince them to copy our shuttle. All the fucking around we had to do in our decades of dependance on the shuttle now puts us about 20 years behind where we would be if we just factory-built lots of Titan V's. For fuck's sake, the Russians are launching our satellites, like we we some sort of technological retards. The shuttle is a catastrophe, and if we're scared of the Chinese out-competing us, let's hope that they're trying to copy it. I expect that they'll know better.
Since 4.0 shares at most some words and concepts with cannonical AD&D, it should be considered just one of the many of AD&D-inspired RPGs.
Is it the best of the AD&D-inspired RPGs? I don't know, but I don't like what I've read so far. Besiders it will be hard to beat Hackmaster.
Seeing the price of the books, what I would recommend to a beginner is the following: Go to a used book store and buy a set of the excellent hardcover AD&D books by Gary Gygax. Why play immitations when you can play the real thing? I can buy them locally in excellent condition for $10 each. For the DMG, PH, MM1&2 and Unearthed Arcana you will pay $50, but you'll walk away with something substantial, historical and cannonical. You'll also learn about the real spirit of AD&D, which has since been emasculated by various marketeers who tried to cash in on the game (by targeting 11-year-olds). Also, the binding is built to last for decades, unlike the modern glue crap.
Many people are realizing the value of the AD&D, and several game cons are now hosting AD&D tables.
Slashdot Mirror
There are lots of effective ways to get the Earth to reflect more sunlight, like smokestacks that pump ash into the atmosphere. Google global dimming. It's what's keeping the earth's temperatures from spiking catastrophically.
Cool, the satellite picture puts the scale into perspective. There is a whole lot of empty space in that chunk of Nevada. They could build 1000 plants like that in the immediate vicinity and nobody would notice!
Stuff from exploded stars is solar? You mean... the sun, Sol, exploded? Are we living in the Matrix? Aaah, red pill!!!
By putting the word 'pedantic' in quotes, it is clear you are mentioning the word, not using the word. Look up the use-mention distinction. So, 'pedantic' most certainly is an adjective. Saying that the word 'pedantic' is an adjective is just redundant.
What's more, if the arms were standard and mass-produced, there's a great excuse for a little coding competition: Whose program will win when it's robot v. robot?
Lots of cool AI, artificial learning and computer vision would go into it, and the result would no doubt be fun to watch!
If AMD can't put out a competitor to Atom, I hope Negroponte decides to go with Intel for the next version of OLPC. I also hope that high volumes could get the prices even lower than $600. But... yeah, I'm definitely intrigued.
I'm not sure how relasing movies in HD before the DVD release will benefit the movie houses though. You know that there will be HD-rips from day one on the internet, and once they circulate, who'll want to rent the comparatively ugly DVD... weeks later, and for money? Do they really have so much faith in their DRM? I don't!
So much work is duplicated between X and Qt, like the anti-aliasing engine. Now I admit that I don't know this stuff well and never worked on this sort of code. That's why the title of my post is a question. However, I'm very interested the answer!
AT&T isn't exactly cheap, but their plans are not out of bounds of the market rates. Seems like the smart thing to do is to just stay with AT&T, enjoy your warranty and feel safe that a stealth update won't brick your phone.
Pieces for all those projects could be made on the moon, rail-gunned into orbit and assebled there. The key to getting this lunar operation off the ground will be sufficient electricity, and you're right, fission is what will provide it.
You said we'd be building big, heavy stuff in factories on the moon. Yes, that's the right goal to aim at. But what will that "stuff" be? Not construction beams for a new lunar suburbia. They will be parts for space stations, space telescopes, spaceships, and all kinds of other stuff that we will want in orbit. Why should that stuff be made on the moon? Well, because all the raw resources are there, because automated manufacturing there should be feasible, and because it will be very easy to launch heavy things into orbit from the moon: With such low gravity and essentially no atmosphere, things can be launched with a simple railgun.
I don't think it will be so great to live on the moon, with all that nasty dust and weak gravity. I say we should cover the moon with solar panels and maybe some fission reactors, and use all that energy for smelting lunar ore, both precious and ordinary. There is no end to the usefulness of the satellites we can make from raw materials on the moon. One of those things: photovoltaic cells which we could railgun into geosynchronous Earth orbit to generate clean power for us. Another thing we need in orbit are big construction pieces from which we could build a large, rotating and mostly self-sufficient space station. That's where we should live - in orbit (maybe at a liberation point), not on the stupid moon.
Also, try to imagine assembling segments of a gigantic (as in 100+ meter) metallic mirror in lunar orbit. The resulting telescope could actually resolve exoplanets!
That's what we should be doing on the moon! Of course, before all that is possible we still need to take steps to refine our technology of automated manufacturing, and we don't need to be on the moon to do a lot of that work. But we do need to learn about the special conditions there, like issues having to do with the dust, the diversity of the geology, the feasibility of certain smelting techniques, the optimal design of nuclear powerplants for the moon, etc. (Yes, the first operations must be powered by fission, get over it. It's the fucking moon.)
So there's my answer.
Yup, exactly what I was thinking. Of course, if I spent the $10,000 on drinks I let someone else distill, I'd probably be better off. But you're right, in a frat house this device could pay for itself in two years!
Yea, I got that, but the fact that this is feasible for offices now means that homes could use the same technology in the near future. There are some "normal" homes in Sweden that already get 100MB internet, which is enough for streaming HD, but not enough for many other things we will eventually come up with. So I was wondering whether there will ever be an "enough" level to the home. For a business like Google, "enough" might only be: the sum of all user bandwidths in the world. But for users, will there be a plateau?
I can't think of anyone who's longing to get a fatter gas pipe connected to their house, or a fatter pipe to municipal water, or a cable of higher capacity to bring in more electricity.
But we're not like that with bandwidth. We always seem to want a fatter pipe of bandwidth! Will it forever be like that? Is the household bandwidth consumption ever going to plateau, like electric, gas and water consumption has in the US? (I know that global demand for these utilities is growing, but that's mainly because there are more people and a larger proportion are being hooked up to municipal utilities. The per-household numbers are not really changing very much, and in some cases decreasing.)
Will there be a plateau in bandwidth demand? If so, when and at what level? Thoughts?
Great story!
Another issue is that the 405nm laser is far less efficient, so larger amounts of energy are being converted to heat rather than photons.
The result is that data providers are now at the mercy of pipe providers. Without net neutrality, it will pay to be a pipe provider. You can extort fees from data providers so that they have access to users at the end of the pipes.
What I foresee is the return of free ISPs, and maybe Google will be one of them. They will pay for all that (probably wireless) infrastructure through deals with data providers who want access to all the people who connect to the internet through Google. The laws allow "pay to play" and that's how Google would be paid for providing their ISP service. I think this could work and I want it to happen, because US ISP's are dicks and they deserve to die.
For one thing, it does not compete with religion, and many strongly religious people (in every major religious tradition) have the same humanistic convictions and take their religion to support their humanism (and vice versa). The same goes for a belief in the results and methods of science: This belief does not crowd out religious belief, and most educated religious people in the West believe in science just as much as atheists do. Ditto for environmentalism and all the other ism's you mention.
You're right that various humanistic movements are organized, but so are chess clubs, national elections and universities. Belonging to an organized religion prevents membership in another organized religion (unless you're Japanese, who seem to have no problem with accepting several religions simultaneously), but it certainly does not prevent membership in another, non-religous organized movement.
I just want it to be clear that humanistic endeavors like the fight against poverty, for environmental conservation, for global justice, etc. are nothing like religions. Religion is a different sort of thing.
Atheists simply don't have a religion. What makes them atheists is that in them, any belief that gods of any sort exist, is absent. This does not force them to put their "faith" in any other movement in particular. I mean, to some extent, every human being with normal, human compassion has some sort of humanistic ideals. But again, that's just a result of being a moral and empathetic person, and it happens to moral people whether or not they have any faith in various gods.
And free minutes will start at 11pm. It's brutal.
As much as I'm a fan of open source things, I don't want the W88 thermonuclear warhead design to be posted to the internet. That thing is surely easier to build than it is to design, and I think too many have been built already.
Well said! It's interesting how the Slashdot mob doesn't quickly remembers this point in some cases and not in others.
You're calling the space shuttle a "working" system? If we want to make sure the Chinese don't beat us in the space race, we convince them to copy our shuttle. All the fucking around we had to do in our decades of dependance on the shuttle now puts us about 20 years behind where we would be if we just factory-built lots of Titan V's. For fuck's sake, the Russians are launching our satellites, like we we some sort of technological retards. The shuttle is a catastrophe, and if we're scared of the Chinese out-competing us, let's hope that they're trying to copy it. I expect that they'll know better.
Bush has the same strategy: So long as your VP is a lot more batshit than you, you're safe.
Is it the best of the AD&D-inspired RPGs? I don't know, but I don't like what I've read so far. Besiders it will be hard to beat Hackmaster.
Seeing the price of the books, what I would recommend to a beginner is the following: Go to a used book store and buy a set of the excellent hardcover AD&D books by Gary Gygax. Why play immitations when you can play the real thing? I can buy them locally in excellent condition for $10 each. For the DMG, PH, MM1&2 and Unearthed Arcana you will pay $50, but you'll walk away with something substantial, historical and cannonical. You'll also learn about the real spirit of AD&D, which has since been emasculated by various marketeers who tried to cash in on the game (by targeting 11-year-olds). Also, the binding is built to last for decades, unlike the modern glue crap.
Many people are realizing the value of the AD&D, and several game cons are now hosting AD&D tables.