The problem CS is that it isn't really one subject, but any accumulation of several, some of which could be described as part of maths (combinatorics, proof, algorithmics) and some which are more engineering (systems architecture), and some which are only vaguly related to computers and are as much about psychology (Intelligent tutoring systems, which is what my fourth year project is on and is a combination of AI, psychology, and HCI). Even within these individual disceplines there is no agreement about whether they are sciences, or engineering. Is formal methods (a subject York uni where I am is quite big on) science, engineering, or maths?
However the same problem exists in other areas. For example, is maths a science. This basically comes down to what we define as a science. Is science, discovery, or invention, or a combination of both. Do mathematicians discover or create mathematical constructs. That of course is an entire philosophy Phd, and an argument that has been raging for years.
I have to agree with you on your first point about most CS degrees. I meet so many CS people from respected universities that go on about how they get taught Jave/C++ etc (insert latest fad language here). When I was looking for a university to go to one of things I looked for was one that wasn't obsessed about the technologies they use, but about the theory, which is why I came to York. The only high level language we were taught properly was Ada95 (the language of choice in this uni because of the work done on formal methods (inc SPARK ada) and realtime stuff. Instead we get exposed to lots of languages (Occam anyone?:->) that are used for different things. I have used Prolog in at least one module a year in the last three years (NLP, constraint logic programming, etc) In total we have used/been exposed to about a dozen languages. The simple reason for this is that they are tools, something that people seem to forget about. Far too many Uni's teach how to use the tools, not the theory behind them. The former change every few years, the latter remain pretty timeless.
Sensibly, my course is called Computer Systems and Software Engineering, reflecting the combination of computer science theory (we do the CS BSc followed by a masters year in software engineering) and engineering.
Interestinly, if you look at the research groups in the department, many of them contain no or very few CS graduates. many of them are full of maths people. the simple reason is that most CS people's maths is not good enough to do the really complex stuff with image recognition, neural/basian nets etc.
Anyway, I have rambled far too long (shame I can't actually go rambling, bloody foot and mouth), back to work.
However, it strikes me from what people have been saying about NS is that it was easy to use not just because the interface was good, but also because the underlying system was good. This thing of all programs being services to other programs sounds like a far better implementation of COM and a return to the philosopy of having one tool to do one job, and do it well, rather than re-implementing funtionality repeatedly. I always thought that this was the unix way of doing things, but NextStep apears to have successfully transfered this to the graphical, monolithic apps. Linux on the other hand does not appear to have done this, with evey graphical user program re-inventing the wheel.
The Open Source movement would do just as well by having a central repository or library of "prior art" that can be used by the patent office to determine if a "new invention" is indeed a new invention. We need to make it easier to prevent patents on core knowledge; I don't see the point in making more patents when our goal is to prevent patents.
You havn't actually read the article have you? It states...
Specifically the joint venture will give open-source and free-software developers the chance to "defensively publish." For a fee of $20 per document (a significant discount over IP.com's usual $100 fee), software inventors will be able to place their innovations in a searchable software database.
Inventors will be assured that patent examiners will see innovations that might otherwise be lost to unseen Web pages or college papers.
So, if IBM tries to patent something that's been published in the IP.com database, for example, the inventor will have a better chance of beating the company in court.
Any idea placed on IP.com's system will be protected from patenting. Or there will at least be a stronger legal basis to stop patents. And since the database is checked by POs, dodgy patents are less likely to get passed if prior art is registered in the IP.com system.
Essentially this is patenting in reverse. Instead of preventing other people from using your idea without licensing it first, it stops people from patenting it and keeping it to themselves. It forces the concept to be open to all.
Please read articles before commenting on their contents.
The theory is a bit more complex, but you have it about right.
When the ice caps melt, the cold fresh water will form a layer over the warmer but more salty water of the gulf stream. This effectively prevents the warm water from rising (water doesn't mix as fast as you would think). The result of this is that something called the globl conveyor, a series of warm ocean current that flow round the earth and distribute heat from the tropics to the poles will stop. These current basically keep areas like northern europe warmer than they would otherwise be. if my memory serves me right, London is at the same latitude as Moscow, the only reason we are so much warmer is because of the gulf stream bringing warmer (and wetter:-
In theory, if the global conveyor does stop, then the isea will get colder. The effect of this is that the tropics will get warmer (due to the general increase in temperature) while the more northerly areas get colder. The most worrying aspect of this is that the effective growing reagions of the world will be squeezed from both sides. The deserts will grow from the equator (that includes the US grain belt), making many areas too hot to farm effectively, while the nothern and sothern temperate zones will get much colder and dryer becuase of reduced transpiration (now there is a word I havn't used in a long time, means the cumulative effect of evaporation from the seas and plants). Basically the worlds prime growing land is going to be squeezed between an ice burg and a desert.
What no one knows is how the global climate will react to this. It is increadibly complex and feedback mechanisms that we don't know about may kick in and either accelerate the effect, or limit it. No one really knows. We could end up with a complete reversal over the next few hundred/thousand years. The ice caps grow, reflecting more light, which means a drop in temerature, which leads to more ice growth and so on. The snowball earth theory.
Over geograpical time the earth is capable of taking care of itself. We could nuke the entire place and things would regrow over the next few (hundred) million years. Unfortunatly humans do not live on the geographical time scale, so we have to care about what happens in the short (or relatively short for the earth) time.
Basically, environmentalism is a very selfish thing. it is all about protecting the environment so that we can carry on living. Over its life the earth has been a place where humans could never have survived, and in the long term (millions of years) it probably will be again. But right here, right now, we have to protect the geo-eco-system purly for our own sakes. Without it we simply cannot survive. It isn't about saving cute little furry things, its about making sure that you and I have somewhere hospitable to live in 60 years time that isn't entirely artificial. And no, we can't move all 6billion people to the moon or mars.
The other analogy that can be made is with houses. Especially in britain, most people either own, or aspire to own their home. Just as with public transport, renting accomadation *should" be better, someone else looks after the property, if something is wrong, they fix it, and if you want to move, it is much easier. Despite the theoretically reduced hassel of renting rather than buying, the latter is still the idea that people aim for. There are several reasons for this...
As mentioned in the parent post people like ownership
The total cost of renting is always higher than buying, especially if you rent for a long time
People feel that renting is money down the drain, you don't actually get anything, it's why people buy movies that they may only watch a few times, despite renting being cheeper.
When you rent (be it a house or software) you have less control over it, while your landlord may pay to have the boiler fixed, chances are that they won't let you paint the ceiling black, or build an extension. when you own you have complete control.
People don't always trust (often for good reason) their landlord to do the right thing. Not all landlords are efficient and keep good care of their property. But when you own, any problems are in your power to fix.
The cost of ownership may be lower for a company to rent software, where the reduction in tech personell can save a fortune, and savings can be made on "mass production" by a service company, those savings are not there for the average home user. They pay more for bandwidth than a large company, and don't have the cost of management etc to make savings on. Also people are unlikely to trust that the companies will always be there. if they buy hardware and software, they have something concrete that no one can take away (ignoring burglars:->), even if the company that made it goes bancrupt.
Ultimatly I just don't see home users being that bothered about hireing software, business yes, but not individuals. Especially as the power of home computing systems is growing much faster than bandwidth and the kind of applications that will be used at home are likely to be much more processor and media intensive than those used by businesses.
Ok, this one isn't as dumb as it sounds. Basically you release lots of sterile females into the area. lots of the randy males mate with these females, but nothing happens. If the ratio of infertile to fertile females is sufficiently high, the reproduction rate will plummet, as many of the males will mate with the infertile ones, thus not producing offspring. You can also do this with infertile males. Either way, you end up with a large number of the attempts at mating producing nothing, thus reducing the overall reproduction rate.
The trick is to make the infertile males/females appear to be fertile. If the modification screws with the ability to produce pheromones etc then the none of the fertile population willl attempt to mate with the infertile ones, thus having no affect on the population.
In britain, experiments are being carried out to give (grey as opposed to red) squirells and pidgeons chemical/oral contraceptives. You don't need to give it to all of the population, just a large proportion. not only do none of the infertile females have ofspring, but the fertile males spend half their time 'shooting at shadows' so to speak.
The idea isn't so much to eliminate the species totally, but to control the population by reducing its reproductive rate. This is especially important for animals like rats and pidgeons where the reproductive rate is huge. You have to keep releasing these moths, or steralising rats/pidgeons etc, in order to keep the reproduction level low.
"Yet I think nano-printers will be a bit percuiliar and expensive for your local crime syndicate so this is in the realms of cross nation spying."
Funny thing is that many crime syndicates (mostly the international drug cartels) have far more money to spend on this sort of thing than most if not all governments. If you havn't seen Traffik, do. Not just because it is a great film, but because it makes some great points to make about the reality of these organistaions. They are very professional, well organised, and exceptionally well funded, and they don't have tax payers to look after. The international drugs trade is valued in the hundreds if not thousands of billions of dollers, most of which is the hugh markup taken at every stage.
Basically the use of stored hydro is to accomodate changing loads. Most power generation systems (especially nuclear) tend to work better if they work at a constant rate. Stored hydro allows you to use excess power to pump water up the hill, which is then used to generate power in times of increased load. That means that the rate of power generation can be kept at the mean power useage (over a given period) while demand can fluctuate.
Ok so some energy is lost, but then energy is lost in all parts of the power generation and distribution system. It is cheaper and easier to run power generators at a constant rate all the time, especially nuclear.
You have it wrong. This system does not do the surgery itself, it is simply an enhancement of the keyhole stuff that people have been doing for ages. The difference is that rather than using direct manipulators and a single camera, two cameras are used and the tools are opperated remotly. It is basically a tele-presence system for surgons. its main advantages are that it is in stereo vision, giving the surgeon better control, and the opperator does not have to be over the patient, allowing for longer operations (as the surgeon will not get as tiered). Also the surgeon will have better control since s/he can change the sensitivity of the controls. As an extra bonus, since the robot hold the tools, there is no reason why more than the normal number of tools could not be used, since the surgeon can position and then leave them while s/he uses another tool.
All round, I think this is a good thing, however I still think that preventative medicine is a much better place to spend all that money.
The interesting thing to consider though is that that is only a measure to help the police track down criminals etc. The way america is going, everyone will become a criminal if the big corperations get there way. Yes we may be losing our privacy here in the UK, but at least we can still do things like crack crypto systems (irrespective of what we do once we have), whereas in the US it is illegal simply to reverse engineer something like CSS. Here it is illegal to copy and sell DVDs, in the US it is illegal to develope a means to copy a DVD, irrespective of whether you do or not. Go figure.
Snooping powers (like RIP) may be a pain, but for most people it isn't really a problem (and as they say, if you havn't done anything wrong you have nothing to fear, the police don't give a toss about your e-mails to your mates). Laws like the DCMA on the other hand, make innocent intellectual pursuits illegal.
I think it means first major bible printed in the west COMMA available online.
The Gutenberg bible was (one of?) the first bibles printed. Due to the fact that Gutenberg invented the press (in the west at least).
Almost certainly, but only having 2 weeks off a year (compared to four to five weeks +eight days public holiday that many people here in the uk get) exasperates this. I worked at IBM this summer and people who went on business trips had orders not to discuss holiday entitlement. Americans may get better pay, but I would still rather be able to take off a month and a half a year and enjoy my what I earn.
Sorry, didn't mean put down your comment, but as a european it makes me chuckle (although with a slight concern) that significantly more americans think they have seen or been abducted by aliens than have passports (about 7% I think). Mind you the lack of travel is probably down to lack of holidays that they get.
Why do you suppose that looking at the stars isn't an accurate way of finding north. Sailors have been using the stars to navigate for centuries (and possibly more). Remember they were using true north, not magnetic. True north is defined by the point at which the axis of rotation meets the earth, meaning that using the stars is actually very accurate. Magnetic north, as any walker will know, does not always point to true north, the correction given on Ordanance Survey maps of the north of England give the correction at about 6 degrees. Quite large if you are navigating in fog using a compass over a large distance.
Using two stars in this way is very simple and elegant and would give a very accurate result.
Why must things be complex in order to be good or accurate?
Ok, not sure how much of a piss take that comment was, but I just have to say a couple of things.
There is a very good reason why the pyramid is so popular, it is about the most stable structure that can be built to any decent height. Both civilisations also built more tradidtional building, with columns etc, but these havn't survived as well so don't feature in the public conscience.
Why do people continually put down the abilities of ancient peoples. Theses guys were probably no less intelligent than us today, they just knew less stuff. That north african region has always been quite prosperous, making the construction of the pyramids economically viable. People forget that technological developement has been exponential, the pace has been increasing all the time. Technology 7,000 years ago wasn't that much worse than that 2,000 years ago. vertually all we know in medicine and the physical sciences has been descovered in the last few hundred years of human existance.
Also, don't lump the egyptians and the south americans, the latter were MUCH more recent, remember the incas were only wiped out a few hundred years ago by the spanish, while the hayday of the egyptians was several thousand years earlier.
I can see your point but people will learn to use this system if it lives up to the claims on performance. A few years ago the idea of using distributed computing was treated with suspision by some because it requires you to learn an alternative way of programming (I'm thinking Beawolf style systems here). What about vector processing,if you need the power then you learn how to do it. This system won't be that different , in its theory, to some of the technologies around at present.
However I can't see it being used on home systems for some time, perhaps until someone comes out with a compiler that can make full use of it while still keeping a familiar programming style for those more orthodox developers.
I may be wrong (so all those astophys grads can correct me if they want) but I don't think Hawking radiation works quite like that.
What happens is you have virtual partical pairs (a partical and anti-partical) which blip into existence and then anialate soon after. They have very short lives. However, if a pair form on the event horizon, one half gets drawn into the hole while the other gains the same (but opposite) energy and is ejected out into space.
That was how I understood it, but if I'm talking out of my 'black hole' feel free to correct me.
By the way, always try to reference quotes where the origin isn't obvious, couldn't find your quote on the MAXIM website so I presume you got it from somewhere else.
Reminds me of the bit in Neil Stephenson book "The Diamond Age" where all the animated bill boards have gotten hugh and simple/shocking (i.e. all sex and violence) simply to get people to notice them. How long before it gets like that for real. Advertisers are going to have to start getting much smarter to get our attention in the future. I suspect that traditional forms of advertising will ultimatly go out the windows as the agencies get smarter and alot more subtle.
Demon Seed was made into a film with Julie Christie where she get impregnated by some hugh computer that takes over her house remotely after deciding that humans are all bastards. Or something like that
New Nick Park film in the works
on
Techno Jacket
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· Score: 1
Oh no Gromit, its the wrong jacket!
I bet you can't steal diamonds with that:->
Slashdot Mirror
The problem CS is that it isn't really one subject, but any accumulation of several, some of which could be described as part of maths (combinatorics, proof, algorithmics) and some which are more engineering (systems architecture), and some which are only vaguly related to computers and are as much about psychology (Intelligent tutoring systems, which is what my fourth year project is on and is a combination of AI, psychology, and HCI). Even within these individual disceplines there is no agreement about whether they are sciences, or engineering. Is formal methods (a subject York uni where I am is quite big on) science, engineering, or maths?
:->) that are used for different things. I have used Prolog in at least one module a year in the last three years (NLP, constraint logic programming, etc) In total we have used/been exposed to about a dozen languages. The simple reason for this is that they are tools, something that people seem to forget about. Far too many Uni's teach how to use the tools, not the theory behind them. The former change every few years, the latter remain pretty timeless.
Sensibly, my course is called Computer Systems and Software Engineering, reflecting the combination of computer science theory (we do the CS BSc followed by a masters year in software engineering) and engineering.
However the same problem exists in other areas. For example, is maths a science. This basically comes down to what we define as a science. Is science, discovery, or invention, or a combination of both. Do mathematicians discover or create mathematical constructs. That of course is an entire philosophy Phd, and an argument that has been raging for years.
I have to agree with you on your first point about most CS degrees. I meet so many CS people from respected universities that go on about how they get taught Jave/C++ etc (insert latest fad language here). When I was looking for a university to go to one of things I looked for was one that wasn't obsessed about the technologies they use, but about the theory, which is why I came to York. The only high level language we were taught properly was Ada95 (the language of choice in this uni because of the work done on formal methods (inc SPARK ada) and realtime stuff. Instead we get exposed to lots of languages (Occam anyone?
Interestinly, if you look at the research groups in the department, many of them contain no or very few CS graduates. many of them are full of maths people. the simple reason is that most CS people's maths is not good enough to do the really complex stuff with image recognition, neural/basian nets etc.
Anyway, I have rambled far too long (shame I can't actually go rambling, bloody foot and mouth), back to work.
Note: I have never used NextStep.
However, it strikes me from what people have been saying about NS is that it was easy to use not just because the interface was good, but also because the underlying system was good. This thing of all programs being services to other programs sounds like a far better implementation of COM and a return to the philosopy of having one tool to do one job, and do it well, rather than re-implementing funtionality repeatedly. I always thought that this was the unix way of doing things, but NextStep apears to have successfully transfered this to the graphical, monolithic apps. Linux on the other hand does not appear to have done this, with evey graphical user program re-inventing the wheel.
The Open Source movement would do just as well by having a central repository or library of "prior art" that can be used by the patent office to determine if a "new invention" is indeed a new invention. We need to make it easier to prevent patents on core knowledge; I don't see the point in making more patents when our goal is to prevent patents.
You havn't actually read the article have you? It states...
Specifically the joint venture will give open-source and free-software developers the chance to "defensively publish." For a fee of $20 per document (a significant discount over IP.com's usual $100 fee), software inventors will be able to place their innovations in a searchable software database.
Inventors will be assured that patent examiners will see innovations that might otherwise be lost to unseen Web pages or college papers.
So, if IBM tries to patent something that's been published in the IP.com database, for example, the inventor will have a better chance of beating the company in court.
Any idea placed on IP.com's system will be protected from patenting. Or there will at least be a stronger legal basis to stop patents. And since the database is checked by POs, dodgy patents are less likely to get passed if prior art is registered in the IP.com system.
Essentially this is patenting in reverse. Instead of preventing other people from using your idea without licensing it first, it stops people from patenting it and keeping it to themselves. It forces the concept to be open to all.
Please read articles before commenting on their contents.
The theory is a bit more complex, but you have it about right.
:-
When the ice caps melt, the cold fresh water will form a layer over the warmer but more salty water of the gulf stream. This effectively prevents the warm water from rising (water doesn't mix as fast as you would think). The result of this is that something called the globl conveyor, a series of warm ocean current that flow round the earth and distribute heat from the tropics to the poles will stop. These current basically keep areas like northern europe warmer than they would otherwise be. if my memory serves me right, London is at the same latitude as Moscow, the only reason we are so much warmer is because of the gulf stream bringing warmer (and wetter
In theory, if the global conveyor does stop, then the isea will get colder. The effect of this is that the tropics will get warmer (due to the general increase in temperature) while the more northerly areas get colder. The most worrying aspect of this is that the effective growing reagions of the world will be squeezed from both sides. The deserts will grow from the equator (that includes the US grain belt), making many areas too hot to farm effectively, while the nothern and sothern temperate zones will get much colder and dryer becuase of reduced transpiration (now there is a word I havn't used in a long time, means the cumulative effect of evaporation from the seas and plants). Basically the worlds prime growing land is going to be squeezed between an ice burg and a desert.
What no one knows is how the global climate will react to this. It is increadibly complex and feedback mechanisms that we don't know about may kick in and either accelerate the effect, or limit it. No one really knows. We could end up with a complete reversal over the next few hundred/thousand years. The ice caps grow, reflecting more light, which means a drop in temerature, which leads to more ice growth and so on. The snowball earth theory.
Over geograpical time the earth is capable of taking care of itself. We could nuke the entire place and things would regrow over the next few (hundred) million years. Unfortunatly humans do not live on the geographical time scale, so we have to care about what happens in the short (or relatively short for the earth) time.
Basically, environmentalism is a very selfish thing. it is all about protecting the environment so that we can carry on living. Over its life the earth has been a place where humans could never have survived, and in the long term (millions of years) it probably will be again. But right here, right now, we have to protect the geo-eco-system purly for our own sakes. Without it we simply cannot survive. It isn't about saving cute little furry things, its about making sure that you and I have somewhere hospitable to live in 60 years time that isn't entirely artificial. And no, we can't move all 6billion people to the moon or mars.
- As mentioned in the parent post people like ownership
- The total cost of renting is always higher than buying, especially if you rent for a long time
- People feel that renting is money down the drain, you don't actually get anything, it's why people buy movies that they may only watch a few times, despite renting being cheeper.
- When you rent (be it a house or software) you have less control over it, while your landlord may pay to have the boiler fixed, chances are that they won't let you paint the ceiling black, or build an extension. when you own you have complete control.
- People don't always trust (often for good reason) their landlord to do the right thing. Not all landlords are efficient and keep good care of their property. But when you own, any problems are in your power to fix.
The cost of ownership may be lower for a company to rent software, where the reduction in tech personell can save a fortune, and savings can be made on "mass production" by a service company, those savings are not there for the average home user. They pay more for bandwidth than a large company, and don't have the cost of management etc to make savings on. Also people are unlikely to trust that the companies will always be there. if they buy hardware and software, they have something concrete that no one can take away (ignoring burglarsUltimatly I just don't see home users being that bothered about hireing software, business yes, but not individuals. Especially as the power of home computing systems is growing much faster than bandwidth and the kind of applications that will be used at home are likely to be much more processor and media intensive than those used by businesses.
Ok, this one isn't as dumb as it sounds. Basically you release lots of sterile females into the area. lots of the randy males mate with these females, but nothing happens. If the ratio of infertile to fertile females is sufficiently high, the reproduction rate will plummet, as many of the males will mate with the infertile ones, thus not producing offspring. You can also do this with infertile males. Either way, you end up with a large number of the attempts at mating producing nothing, thus reducing the overall reproduction rate.
The trick is to make the infertile males/females appear to be fertile. If the modification screws with the ability to produce pheromones etc then the none of the fertile population willl attempt to mate with the infertile ones, thus having no affect on the population.
In britain, experiments are being carried out to give (grey as opposed to red) squirells and pidgeons chemical/oral contraceptives. You don't need to give it to all of the population, just a large proportion. not only do none of the infertile females have ofspring, but the fertile males spend half their time 'shooting at shadows' so to speak.
The idea isn't so much to eliminate the species totally, but to control the population by reducing its reproductive rate. This is especially important for animals like rats and pidgeons where the reproductive rate is huge. You have to keep releasing these moths, or steralising rats/pidgeons etc, in order to keep the reproduction level low.
"Yet I think nano-printers will be a bit percuiliar and expensive for your local crime syndicate so this is in the realms of cross nation spying."
Funny thing is that many crime syndicates (mostly the international drug cartels) have far more money to spend on this sort of thing than most if not all governments. If you havn't seen Traffik, do. Not just because it is a great film, but because it makes some great points to make about the reality of these organistaions. They are very professional, well organised, and exceptionally well funded, and they don't have tax payers to look after. The international drugs trade is valued in the hundreds if not thousands of billions of dollers, most of which is the hugh markup taken at every stage.
Basically the use of stored hydro is to accomodate changing loads. Most power generation systems (especially nuclear) tend to work better if they work at a constant rate. Stored hydro allows you to use excess power to pump water up the hill, which is then used to generate power in times of increased load. That means that the rate of power generation can be kept at the mean power useage (over a given period) while demand can fluctuate.
Ok so some energy is lost, but then energy is lost in all parts of the power generation and distribution system. It is cheaper and easier to run power generators at a constant rate all the time, especially nuclear.
You have it wrong. This system does not do the surgery itself, it is simply an enhancement of the keyhole stuff that people have been doing for ages. The difference is that rather than using direct manipulators and a single camera, two cameras are used and the tools are opperated remotly. It is basically a tele-presence system for surgons. its main advantages are that it is in stereo vision, giving the surgeon better control, and the opperator does not have to be over the patient, allowing for longer operations (as the surgeon will not get as tiered). Also the surgeon will have better control since s/he can change the sensitivity of the controls. As an extra bonus, since the robot hold the tools, there is no reason why more than the normal number of tools could not be used, since the surgeon can position and then leave them while s/he uses another tool. All round, I think this is a good thing, however I still think that preventative medicine is a much better place to spend all that money.
The interesting thing to consider though is that that is only a measure to help the police track down criminals etc. The way america is going, everyone will become a criminal if the big corperations get there way. Yes we may be losing our privacy here in the UK, but at least we can still do things like crack crypto systems (irrespective of what we do once we have), whereas in the US it is illegal simply to reverse engineer something like CSS. Here it is illegal to copy and sell DVDs, in the US it is illegal to develope a means to copy a DVD, irrespective of whether you do or not. Go figure.
Snooping powers (like RIP) may be a pain, but for most people it isn't really a problem (and as they say, if you havn't done anything wrong you have nothing to fear, the police don't give a toss about your e-mails to your mates). Laws like the DCMA on the other hand, make innocent intellectual pursuits illegal.
I know where I would rather live at the moment.
I think it means first major bible printed in the west COMMA available online. The Gutenberg bible was (one of?) the first bibles printed. Due to the fact that Gutenberg invented the press (in the west at least).
Almost certainly, but only having 2 weeks off a year (compared to four to five weeks +eight days public holiday that many people here in the uk get) exasperates this. I worked at IBM this summer and people who went on business trips had orders not to discuss holiday entitlement. Americans may get better pay, but I would still rather be able to take off a month and a half a year and enjoy my what I earn.
Sorry, didn't mean put down your comment, but as a european it makes me chuckle (although with a slight concern) that significantly more americans think they have seen or been abducted by aliens than have passports (about 7% I think). Mind you the lack of travel is probably down to lack of holidays that they get.
Ever thought of becomming a journo. The two are not connected, I was just illustrating that the error between true and magnetic is quite significant.
Aliens are a modern mythology
Correction: Aliens are a modern AMERICAN mythology.
About 15% of americans believe they have seen or been abducted by aliens, just over the border in Canada the number is less than 1%.
Go figure.
Why do you suppose that looking at the stars isn't an accurate way of finding north. Sailors have been using the stars to navigate for centuries (and possibly more). Remember they were using true north, not magnetic. True north is defined by the point at which the axis of rotation meets the earth, meaning that using the stars is actually very accurate. Magnetic north, as any walker will know, does not always point to true north, the correction given on Ordanance Survey maps of the north of England give the correction at about 6 degrees. Quite large if you are navigating in fog using a compass over a large distance.
Using two stars in this way is very simple and elegant and would give a very accurate result.
Why must things be complex in order to be good or accurate?
Ok, not sure how much of a piss take that comment was, but I just have to say a couple of things.
There is a very good reason why the pyramid is so popular, it is about the most stable structure that can be built to any decent height. Both civilisations also built more tradidtional building, with columns etc, but these havn't survived as well so don't feature in the public conscience.
Why do people continually put down the abilities of ancient peoples. Theses guys were probably no less intelligent than us today, they just knew less stuff. That north african region has always been quite prosperous, making the construction of the pyramids economically viable. People forget that technological developement has been exponential, the pace has been increasing all the time. Technology 7,000 years ago wasn't that much worse than that 2,000 years ago. vertually all we know in medicine and the physical sciences has been descovered in the last few hundred years of human existance.
Also, don't lump the egyptians and the south americans, the latter were MUCH more recent, remember the incas were only wiped out a few hundred years ago by the spanish, while the hayday of the egyptians was several thousand years earlier.
I can see your point but people will learn to use this system if it lives up to the claims on performance. A few years ago the idea of using distributed computing was treated with suspision by some because it requires you to learn an alternative way of programming (I'm thinking Beawolf style systems here). What about vector processing,if you need the power then you learn how to do it. This system won't be that different , in its theory, to some of the technologies around at present.
However I can't see it being used on home systems for some time, perhaps until someone comes out with a compiler that can make full use of it while still keeping a familiar programming style for those more orthodox developers.
...explosion of radiation as the black hole evaporates entirely, leaving a naked singularity behind it...
What is the difference between a black hole and a 'naked singularity'? I've heard of these before but never known what they were.
I may be wrong (so all those astophys grads can correct me if they want) but I don't think Hawking radiation works quite like that.
What happens is you have virtual partical pairs (a partical and anti-partical) which blip into existence and then anialate soon after. They have very short lives. However, if a pair form on the event horizon, one half gets drawn into the hole while the other gains the same (but opposite) energy and is ejected out into space.
That was how I understood it, but if I'm talking out of my 'black hole' feel free to correct me.
By the way, always try to reference quotes where the origin isn't obvious, couldn't find your quote on the MAXIM website so I presume you got it from somewhere else.
Reminds me of the bit in Neil Stephenson book "The Diamond Age" where all the animated bill boards have gotten hugh and simple/shocking (i.e. all sex and violence) simply to get people to notice them. How long before it gets like that for real. Advertisers are going to have to start getting much smarter to get our attention in the future. I suspect that traditional forms of advertising will ultimatly go out the windows as the agencies get smarter and alot more subtle.
Demon Seed was made into a film with Julie Christie where she get impregnated by some hugh computer that takes over her house remotely after deciding that humans are all bastards. Or something like that
Oh no Gromit, its the wrong jacket! :->
I bet you can't steal diamonds with that
Check out this for the full specs. Looks like a pretty good machine.
Just for those of us who don't live in the US, how big is a dime? Could make all the difference.