While you might argue that a simple model show the same energy requirement for ascending a hill as braking on the descent, I'm a mountain unicyclist and that is not at all the subjective experience.
If your unicycle is equipped with a brake, sure.
Without a brake, downhill is much riskier because the consequence of your legs getting tired is worse.
On a flat surface or uphill slope, if your legs get tired you can just slow the unicycle down (or stop and hop off) until your legs recover.
On a downhill slope, if your legs get tired you will start to go faster, eventually to the point that the pedals are turning fast enough that you can no longer synchronize your leg strokes with the position of the pedals to control your speed at all. At that point the unicycle will get ahead of you and you will fall backwards onto your ass at high speed, which isn't much fun.:(
Especially when you consider the same argument 2 billion years ago. Protip: We're all still running off of the same "non renewable" renewable energy.
So the plan is to finish burning up all the existing fossil fuel during the next century or two, and then put everyone into suspended animation for 2 billion years while the Earth refills the fossil fuel reserves?
It's free to download and install, your credit card will be billed automatically, shortly after the first time you enter your personal info into any web site:^)
Second point: Screwing the pooch means you're making puppies, or sitting in the back room, doing nothing. Probably not the most fitting euphamism for this 800lb gorilla in the room (which looks like a duck, quacks like a lame duck, and walks like a dumb duck).
That could be easily mitigated by putting an inch by inch sticker on the wrist rest which reads "With Touch!"
Great, yet another sticker. The only thing worse than a PC that's been decorated like a NASCAR contestant is the knowledge that many of the people who buy those PCs never take the stickers off of them -- presumably because they either don't realize they are removable, or because they are afraid that removing them might somehow cause the computer to malfunction.
It's over two million square miles, does all of it have to remain pristine?
It's not an all-or-nothing question, but rather how much needs to remain pristine, and which areas in particular are the ones whose health are vital to the ecosystem?
I don't think anyone has argued that the entire Amazon can be or will be preserved indefinitely. But presumably the areas marked as off-limits to logging are so marked because they are the ones that are important to preserve, and it is those areas in particular where illegal logging needs to be stopped.
The whole device is kind of ridiculous to begin with, you operate an illegal radio jammer off your truck and after taking the tree down actively look for the tracking device. If a tree is worth tens of thousands then obviously its worth the time to fish it out.
Of course, given cheap enough technology the authorities could keep making the game more difficult -- hide multiple transmitters on each tree, and have each transmitter only activate at random intervals. The cost of verifying that a tree is "clean" would rise proportionally, hopefully to the point where it was no longer worth the poacher's time to deal with it.
Of course that would likely get pretty expensive, and we'd end up with forests full of electronics, which probably isn't what we want either...
Allow a private owner to own n acres of rain forest, have him hire security to protect the resource, and then the economics becomes that of whether the bribe is worth losing the contract.
So the private owner will get money for 'protecting' the trees, as well as money for cutting them down and selling them. Win/win!
Seriously, who is supplying the money that is to motivate the private owner to protect the trees, and can they afford to keep doing that indefinitely, even as the amount of money the owner could get from logging them rises?
The cooks, the manager, the cleaning staff, and finally you, until nobody has any work or any money.
Well, the owners of the robots will presumably have most of the money at that point, as everybody will be buying goods and services from them.
And then it's just a matter of nationalizing the machines (which is doable since the plebians will still represent the vast majority of votes, even if they are out of work), et voila, free food and basic commodities for all (at least until the necessary natural resources are depleted!)
Actually, they will begin to demand less from their government. Like less defense from an imaginary pending attack from South Korea. Less in the way of starvation labor camps. Less in the way of grotesque mass-parade theater showing love for their various iterations of Great Leader, Dear Leader, etc.
I'm not sure it's correct to say the North Korean people demand any of those things, so much as put up with them, on account of their preference not to be thrown into a starvation labor camp.
But aren't laser pulses that coincidentally point our way detectable? If you have gajillion satellites and spaceships all about, then every now and then one will line up with Earth.
Will the aliens' laser have spread out enough to cover a significant part (or all) of Earth by that point, or will it still be pretty small? It's no good having the laser light land in New Zealand if your receiving equipment is in Australia, after all...
This isn't 1930 anymore. You would be amazed what people are building in their garages these days.
No doubt. But the intersection of "people skilled enough to build their own workable assault weapon" and "people crazy enough to go on a mass-murder/suicide run" is much smaller than the size of the latter group alone.
So everyone you see these days flogging one plan or another in wake of Sandy Hook really don't give 2 shits about the kids that were killed, just about using the emotional uproar to advance their agenda and get it passed in a flurry of reflexive emotion.
You forgot to think about why they want their agenda passed. It's not just because they like passing laws for fun. It's because they don't want to see more people massacred.
Guyd like lanza use what's at their disposal. if he didn't have access to weaponry, he would've made his own.
If guys like Lanza were forced to make their own weaponry, that would be a major improvement over the status quo -- both because it would take them a long time to do so (during which period they might get caught or get frustrated and give up on their murder idea), and because the resulting weaponry would be amateur quality, not professional/military quality, and therefore considerably less effective at killing people.
History shows us that unarmed populations have a non-zero chance of being killed by their own governments.
... And armed populations have a non-zero chance of that as well. In fact you're much more likely to be killed by a policeman if the policeman knows (or suspects) that you are carrying a gun.
AFAICT there are two separate facts that the brand name 'Windows' conveys to the consumer:
1) This product will be compatible with the ubiquitous Win32 ABI, so you can go into BestBuy (or whatever), purchase any "Windows compatible" software box, and have it install and run.
2) This product has a user interface with windows in it (i.e. little GUI rectangles with widgets in them that the user can drag around, minimize, maximize, place in front of each other, etc, as seen in all previous "Microsoft Windows" products)
Is Windows RT described by either of these? If not, I agree, calling it "Windows" only sows confusion.
Don't believe me? Piers Morgan is still in the US isn't he?
Are you seriously suggesting that the US government should extralegally deport people simply because their views are unpopular with certain self-righteous segments of society?
Slashdot Mirror
While you might argue that a simple model show the same energy requirement for ascending a hill as braking on the descent, I'm a mountain unicyclist and that is not at all the subjective experience.
If your unicycle is equipped with a brake, sure.
Without a brake, downhill is much riskier because the consequence of your legs getting tired is worse.
On a flat surface or uphill slope, if your legs get tired you can just slow the unicycle down (or stop and hop off) until your legs recover.
On a downhill slope, if your legs get tired you will start to go faster, eventually to the point that the pedals are turning fast enough that you can no longer synchronize your leg strokes with the position of the pedals to control your speed at all. At that point the unicycle will get ahead of you and you will fall backwards onto your ass at high speed, which isn't much fun. :(
Especially when you consider the same argument 2 billion years ago. Protip: We're all still running off of the same "non renewable" renewable energy.
So the plan is to finish burning up all the existing fossil fuel during the next century or two, and then put everyone into suspended animation for 2 billion years while the Earth refills the fossil fuel reserves?
If so, I like it.
You go to the pirate bay and get windows 7.
Ah, yes -- Windows 7 "Trojan Backdoor Edition".
It's free to download and install, your credit card will be billed automatically, shortly after the first time you enter your personal info into any web site :^)
Second point: Screwing the pooch means you're making puppies, or sitting in the back room, doing nothing. Probably not the most fitting euphamism for this 800lb gorilla in the room (which looks like a duck, quacks like a lame duck, and walks like a dumb duck).
I miss BadAnalogyGuy.
That could be easily mitigated by putting an inch by inch sticker on the wrist rest which reads "With Touch!"
Great, yet another sticker. The only thing worse than a PC that's been decorated like a NASCAR contestant is the knowledge that many of the people who buy those PCs never take the stickers off of them -- presumably because they either don't realize they are removable, or because they are afraid that removing them might somehow cause the computer to malfunction.
That's a great video link, thanks!
It's over two million square miles, does all of it have to remain pristine?
It's not an all-or-nothing question, but rather how much needs to remain pristine, and which areas in particular are the ones whose health are vital to the ecosystem?
I don't think anyone has argued that the entire Amazon can be or will be preserved indefinitely. But presumably the areas marked as off-limits to logging are so marked because they are the ones that are important to preserve, and it is those areas in particular where illegal logging needs to be stopped.
The whole device is kind of ridiculous to begin with, you operate an illegal radio jammer off your truck and after taking the tree down actively look for the tracking device. If a tree is worth tens of thousands then obviously its worth the time to fish it out.
Of course, given cheap enough technology the authorities could keep making the game more difficult -- hide multiple transmitters on each tree, and have each transmitter only activate at random intervals. The cost of verifying that a tree is "clean" would rise proportionally, hopefully to the point where it was no longer worth the poacher's time to deal with it.
Of course that would likely get pretty expensive, and we'd end up with forests full of electronics, which probably isn't what we want either...
Allow a private owner to own n acres of rain forest, have him hire security to protect the resource, and then the economics becomes that of whether the bribe is worth losing the contract.
So the private owner will get money for 'protecting' the trees, as well as money for cutting them down and selling them. Win/win!
Seriously, who is supplying the money that is to motivate the private owner to protect the trees, and can they afford to keep doing that indefinitely, even as the amount of money the owner could get from logging them rises?
Since you can't have a colonoscopy and cross a bridge in the US without getting pulled over by DHS, I'm *sure* the above is going to work
Just wrap it in a layer of marijuana, then it will get through without being detected.
The cooks, the manager, the cleaning staff, and finally you, until nobody has any work or any money.
Well, the owners of the robots will presumably have most of the money at that point, as everybody will be buying goods and services from them.
And then it's just a matter of nationalizing the machines (which is doable since the plebians will still represent the vast majority of votes, even if they are out of work), et voila, free food and basic commodities for all (at least until the necessary natural resources are depleted!)
I didn't say they are demanding those things now.
Here's what I was responding to:
Actually, they will begin to demand less from their government.
If you say that they will demand less in the (hypothetical) future, then it follows that you must think that they are demanding something now.
Actually, they will begin to demand less from their government. Like less defense from an imaginary pending attack from South Korea. Less in the way of starvation labor camps. Less in the way of grotesque mass-parade theater showing love for their various iterations of Great Leader, Dear Leader, etc.
I'm not sure it's correct to say the North Korean people demand any of those things, so much as put up with them, on account of their preference not to be thrown into a starvation labor camp.
But aren't laser pulses that coincidentally point our way detectable? If you have gajillion satellites and spaceships all about, then every now and then one will line up with Earth.
Will the aliens' laser have spread out enough to cover a significant part (or all) of Earth by that point, or will it still be pretty small? It's no good having the laser light land in New Zealand if your receiving equipment is in Australia, after all...
This isn't 1930 anymore. You would be amazed what people are building in their garages these days.
No doubt. But the intersection of "people skilled enough to build their own workable assault weapon" and "people crazy enough to go on a mass-murder/suicide run" is much smaller than the size of the latter group alone.
So everyone you see these days flogging one plan or another in wake of Sandy Hook really don't give 2 shits about the kids that were killed, just about using the emotional uproar to advance their agenda and get it passed in a flurry of reflexive emotion.
You forgot to think about why they want their agenda passed. It's not just because they like passing laws for fun. It's because they don't want to see more people massacred.
Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, etc. Governments have murdered far more people than religion has
Therefore, tax the government? ;)
Guyd like lanza use what's at their disposal. if he didn't have access to weaponry, he would've made his own.
If guys like Lanza were forced to make their own weaponry, that would be a major improvement over the status quo -- both because it would take them a long time to do so (during which period they might get caught or get frustrated and give up on their murder idea), and because the resulting weaponry would be amateur quality, not professional/military quality, and therefore considerably less effective at killing people.
History shows us that unarmed populations have a non-zero chance of being killed by their own governments.
... And armed populations have a non-zero chance of that as well. In fact you're much more likely to be killed by a policeman if the policeman knows (or suspects) that you are carrying a gun.
There is so many more things that can go wrong with Java than a standard C++ application.
I think you grossly underestimate C++'s ability to go wrong :^)
I'd like to create an Alan Turing! Now if I can just find a hot babe to make him for me
You should learn basic gestation so you aren't at the mercy of hot babes.
Call it Windows Tablet or something.
AFAICT there are two separate facts that the brand name 'Windows' conveys to the consumer:
1) This product will be compatible with the ubiquitous Win32 ABI, so you can go into BestBuy (or whatever), purchase any "Windows compatible" software box, and have it install and run.
2) This product has a user interface with windows in it (i.e. little GUI rectangles with widgets in them that the user can drag around, minimize, maximize, place in front of each other, etc, as seen in all previous "Microsoft Windows" products)
Is Windows RT described by either of these? If not, I agree, calling it "Windows" only sows confusion.
You could also just ditch the chair and stand up in front of the computer.
... or if you want to take that a bit further, there's this.
Because then you look like a weirdo in your office. Geeks a lot of times have issues feeling awkward. This won't help.
The flip side of that coin is that if you're a geek, people already think you're weird, so you don't have much to lose there.
Don't believe me? Piers Morgan is still in the US isn't he?
Are you seriously suggesting that the US government should extralegally deport people simply because their views are unpopular with certain self-righteous segments of society?