Imagine a setup in which the claimed charged/superconductor disc setup is activated, manipulating gravity and producing a area above the device where earths' gravity is "shielded". Now, rig a device (weighted buckets on a string for example), one side of which is exposed to normal gravity and the other side of which is suspended above your Average Household Gravity Manipulation Device(tm). The apparatus on the side of normal gravity would be in constant frefall while the side above the shielded area "flows" up. Instant perpetual motion machine and violation of thermodynamic law.
IANAP but it would appear that this is inescapable and would prove gravity manipulation impossible. Any REAL physicists here please feel free to humiliate me mercilessly if I am wrong.:o]
(Note: I am not a "REAL physicist")
Thought experiment #2
You have two buckets, set up so water flows out of one, into the other via gravity. You set up the Average Household Water Transfer Device (aka a pump) so that it forces water from the lower bucket into the higher one. Instant perpetual motion machine and violation of thermodynamic law! Except...
Entropy increase applies to a closed system. No part of thermodynamics is violated by a localized decrease in entropy so long as the total entropy of the system increases.
Your mistake is in treating the buckets plus the Average Household Gravity Manipulation Device(tm) as a closed system, when it is not. The AHGMD, just like the pump, would require energy from the outside in order to continue operating. Without that energy, the AHGMD shuts down, the gravitiational "shielding" stops, and so does your "perpetual" motion device.
So, even with gravitational repulsion, in this house, we still obey the laws of thermodynamics.
(Actually, I think I can come up with an explanation that doesn't require a powered AHGMD, but I'm not quite so certain as to its validity.)
you REALLY should check your facts... it was the "Erodium P.U.36 Explosive Space Disintegrator" that was employed by the nefarious Marvin the Martian..
Check your own facts, bub. It is quite clearly the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator (spelling of 'Illudium' may vary). If you want to claim something else, find an audio clip.
(I just love the way Marvin the Martian says "modulator".)
What's interesting is that the article doesn't investigate the science or engineering or even the economics of the station, but concentrates on the very shallow word of "sucks".
I think everybody already knew that the science, engineering, and economics of the station suck. The news here is that we've got an overly expensive space station that is pretty much useless for doing science work, doesn't show the progress in space station design that one would expect in the 15 years since the first piece of Mir was put into orbit, AND isn't even a nice place to visit.
Sometimes I think it would be cheaper for NASA to figure out a way to haul a nuclear submarine into orbit, and use that for a space station, than for them to continue to try to make the ISS work.
Then why are speed limits still kept artificially low. Interstate highways were designed for safe driving at 75 mph. Do you know any areas where the speed limit is such?
US states with a rural interstate speed limit of 75 mph:
Arizona
Colorado
Idaho
Montana (yes Virginia, Montana has a speed limit)
Nebraska
Nevada
New Mexico
Oklahoma
South Dakota
Wyoming
US states with a rural interstate speed limit of 70 mph:
Alabama
Arkansas
California
Florida
Georgia
Kansas
Louisiana
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
North Carolina
North Dakota
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Washington
West Virginia
Speed limits in urban areas tend to be lower, due to heavier traffic and more frequent lane changes.
To the uninitiated, they all look the same, but let me open your eyes.
$i is a faithful servant, to whom you entrust the results of your most elaborate calculation.
$i is an ignoramus who can do little more than count to 10.
$i is steadfast and will never change value.
$i is liable to disappear, and can only be counted on when you're nearby.
$i is a conniving back-stabber, who will change values in defiance of all laws of logic and program flow.
Why am I reminded of the Babylon 5 episode Conflicts of Interest?
"Zathras came with us to Babylon 4."
"Yes."
"Zathras stayed in the past with Valen."
"Yes."
"You are Zathras."
"Yes."
"Therefore, you went into the past."
"No, that was not Zathras, that was Zathras. There are 10 of us, all of family Zathras, each one named Zathras. Slight differences in how you pronounce. Zathras, Zathras, Zathras.. You are seeing now?"
The greatest trick Bill Gates ever pulled, they will say, was that he made windows desktop software so ridiculously difficult to install, use, and maintain (via the windows registry) and then convinced everyone to buy into a networked solution,.NET, to solve these problems he created.
I would argue that the greatest trick Bill Gates pulled was managing to succeed in using the same trick repeatedly to build a corporate empire.
A quote:
The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all his customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who by peddling second-hand, second-rate technology, led them all into it in the first place.
That is everyone's favorite Hitchhiker, the late Douglas Adams. He wass speaking about Windows 95 (New! Improved! Almost as good as a Mac!). You are not the only one to realize that Microsoft has pulled this trick, but it must be made clear that they have done so before, and will most likely try it again.
A long, long time ago
I can still remember how the normal people got to space.
They got together with a team,
to fulfil a president's dream,
And be the ones to win the greatest race.
Yeah, the A-Team could build anything. Oh, wait "a team", not the "A-Team". Nevermind.
(I pity the fool who can't spell "roketier" correctly!)
Hmm. And to think, it was NASA that brought us such useful substances as teflon, which makes for easy-clean, non-stick surfaces...
No, no no NO NO NO! Teflon (PTFE) was not invented by NASA. Teflon was not even invented by someone else for the space program. Teflon was "invented" by accident at DuPont in 1938
(to be truly anal, I should be using the ® mark after Teflon, but I'm not. Neener-neener-neener.)
Does anyone really expect Ashcroft to pursue Microsoft?
I could be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure that once a guilty verdict has been issued, you can't drop the charges.
They could of course give up in spirit and not bother to show up at the new sentencing hearings, but that seems a bit silly even for the current administration.
We do not mutate from GE foods, nor do I see a way to (unless, of course, some viral properties are inadvertantly introduced into the specimen, etc etc).
One of the more common uses of genetic engineering in relation to crops seems to be to cause the plant to produce its own pesticides. It's not hard to imagine that those pesticides could have mutagenic or carcinogenic properties. Not that the difference between the plant making the pesticides itself or the plant absorbing the same pesticides sprayed onto it would necessarily be that great.
It's the same as the analogy of the ol' butterfly flapping its wings in SoCal and causing tsunamis in Japan.
That would be typhoons, not tsunamis. Tsunamis are generally caused by earthquakes. Although I suppose one could devise a scenario where the force generated by the butterfly's wings cascades through the ground, causing subtle changes in location and friction ultimately leading to an earthquake, the term Buttefly Effect is generally used to refer to the effects on meteorological conditions.
Veering even further offtopic, the original formulation of the idea apparently involved a sea gull!
Dude. Both of those quotes are referring to the GeForce 2 GTS. The Tom Duff post to comp.graphics.rendering.renderman is over a year old. The review being posted is about the GeForce 3.
Yes, much of what Tom Duff said probably still holds true, but let's try to quote material that is actually referring to the subject at hand, mm'kay?
(The original can be found at Apple's mailing list archive. If it asks for a username/password, use archives/archives.)
Subject: Jordan Hubbard joins Apple Computer
To: darwin-development@lists.apple.com, publicsource-announce@lists.apple.com
From: "Brett R. Halle"
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 16:06:21 -0700
I am pleased to announce that Jordan Hubbard has accepted a position
within Apple's Core OS Engineering Department as the new manager of BSD
Technologies, Apple Computer. Jordan is well known in the Open Source
community and as a co-founder of the FreeBSD Project. Jordan comes to
us from WindRiver Systems, where he was responsible for their FreeBSD
CD-ROM product line. In his spare time, he is and continues to be an
active member of the FreeBSD Core Team. For his "day job" at Apple,
he will be responsible for leveraging BSD technology as part of Mac OS X
as well as managing Darwin releases and Apple's partnership with the
Open Source community.
Please join us in welcoming Jordan into his new role at Apple. We
believe having someone at Apple with his unique combination of history,
skills, and relationships will greatly enhance both Darwin and the
larger BSD community.
Sincerely,
Brett Halle
Director, Core OS Engineering
Apple Computer
You say that busting fraud is way cool in your book, which in this case was simply an application of technology by the USGS to solve a sociological problem, that of theft/fraud. Doesn't that seem to be in direct opposition with your sig("You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)")?
The solution to the sociological problem is to determine that the problem exists, then punish the offenders. That is, go out and look at all the fields, see if the numbers match up, and if they don't, then prosecute. This is not a technological solution, unless you consider eyes and a brain technology.
There is a problem of limited resources in the "go out and look at all the fields" step. The technological solution is being applied to the problem of not having enough resources to check large numbers of fields efficiently.
In any case, I think if a _network_ charged people fees it might work. An artist could have a very small webspace to introduce people, or show just today's comic, but then you'd subscribe to, say, keenspot for 3 bucks a month and you'd have access to the whole network. I would do that.
Funny you should say that. Keenspot Premium. $4.95 a month, no ads. It's new, so I'm not sure how well it is working.
This has a negative side effect of centralization. If one of the comics is unavailable, it is almost certain that all of the comics are unavailable. With Keenspot, it seems they suffer a major failure roughly once a month.
What makes this "AI"? Or to turn the question around, why aren't routers and print spoolers considered AI if this is? Artificial Intelegence is a big problem; it's solution isn't hastened by using the term as a synonym for "we picked a better algorithm than you might have expected us to."
I once read AI described as being a solution to a problem whose solution is unknown. A system would cease to be AI when the solution becomes known, even if the system hasn't changed.
I don't recall the exact example given, but it went something like this: You have a problem that you do not know the solution to, let's say how to determine the volume of a sphere given its radius. You can measure the radius, and you can measure the volume, but you cannot determine the relationship between them. So you throw a neural network at some test measurments, and it starts spitting out correct results. AI at work! But then, you study what the neural net is doing, and determine that it is simply applying the formula (4/3)pi*r^3 to the radius. The neural net hasn't changed, but now that you know the formula it has become just a fancy way of executing a few floating point multiplications. Is it still AI?
I find this definition useful, even if it does suffer from a sort of Heisenbergian uncertainty principle (it might be AI, but only if you don't look at what it is actually doing). This also leads to the interesting case that a system may appear to be AI to an outside observer, but only a simple rule system to the person who programmed it.
You may think it's fine to send an unregulated robotic probe off to Mars to collect samples, but you won't be laughing when that robot claims Mars in the name of cybernetics and starts broadcasting communistic Mars Free Radio signals at our precious bodily television bands.
Sometimes, when I see the moderation on a comment, I wish there was a "moderator goal" menu when performing moderation. I would like to know if the person who gave this silly troll a +1 insightful was being silly himself, trying to bring about the collapse of slashdot, or simply smoking dried cat feces.
Restricted and limited in that I have to buy a system preconfigured by Apple, according to what they want to sell me.
The Apple Store offers build to order. The options are comparable to what you would find at Dell or Gateway's online stores. You can order some strange configurations, like a G4 with 2 60 gig IDE drives, 1.5 gigs of RAM, and 4 video cards.
Now, in a PC, if it starts becoming obsolete, I can go out and buy a new motherboard and CPU, slap it in, and bang, my computer's ready to live another few years.
I would say that if you've replaced the motherboard and the CPU, you really don't have the same computer any more, but this is a matter of opinion, so I'm not going to argue it.
As I recall (and I may be slightly wrong on this), Apple no longer offers non-IDE drives in their desktops.
Bullshit. Apple has 8 SCSI options for the G4 desktop ranging from a single 36 gig drive to triple 72 giggers. You can't get SCSI in an iMac, but you don't buy an iMac for that kind of speed.
The fact that they finally moved to the industry standard PCI bus is a great thing
Finally!? They switched to PCI in 1995!
(Although, I don't know that I've yet seen a Mac with more than 2 slots)
This says to me you haven't seen a Mac built since 1997, and that they were the low-end family targetted models at that. Current G4s have 3 PCI slots and 1 AGP. Some earlier models, such as the ever-popular 9600, had six slots. Most models had three.
If you want to complain about Apple, complain about real problems. Complain about the exorbitant cost of RAM and drives (just because you can get SCSI at the Apple store, that doesn't mean you should). Complain about the crufty OS. Complain about the PowerPC chips falling behind in performance. Hell, complain about the CEO being insane, I don't care. Just don't complain about problems you've imagined.
And finally, space exploration caused NASA to start calling up chemical companies, looking for a durable, slippery, lightweight and high-temperature plastic. Dupont stepped up to the challenge and invented Teflon.
And to that I say," bullshit ". Teflon was "invented" accidentally in 1938 by a DuPont chemist doing research work on refrigerants. While NASA makes heavy use of Teflon, they had nothing to do with its invention.
2. Enforcement: An application for a TLD should explain the mechanism for charter enforcement where relevant and desired.
So who gets to enforce the charter on.xxx? =)
B. Type of TLD, such as but not limited to:
1. Unrestricted (e.g.,.com)
2. Unrestricted with definition or semantic meaning, but no enforcement (e.g.,.org)
3. Restricted to a particular class of registrants or particular uses ("sponsored" or "chartered", e.g.,.edu)
This, and other parts of the Topic, suggest that ICANN is looking at actually enforcing the distinctions in any new TLDs. So if you go to mcdonalds.banc, you likely won't be getting an ad for Big Macs.
Another interesting tidbit is:
The Names Council also concluded that different types of TLDs warrant different types of protection for intellectual property. For example, some have reasoned that more protections are appropriate in a commercial TLD than in one designated for non-commercial uses.
Which seems to imply that if a person named Ford registers ford under a TLD reserved for personal domain names, any claim by the auto maker would (in theory) be ignored.
The last piece I'm going to point out is the timeline. The official announcment of the addition of any new TLDs won't be happening until November 1. Contracts between ICANN and registrars have a deadline of December 1. There is no mention of when the TLDs become available, but one would assume it would be after the contracts are finalized. (Please note that the schedule is only suggested and not final)
Slashdot Mirror
(Note: I am not a "REAL physicist")
Thought experiment #2
You have two buckets, set up so water flows out of one, into the other via gravity. You set up the Average Household Water Transfer Device (aka a pump) so that it forces water from the lower bucket into the higher one. Instant perpetual motion machine and violation of thermodynamic law! Except...
Entropy increase applies to a closed system. No part of thermodynamics is violated by a localized decrease in entropy so long as the total entropy of the system increases.
Your mistake is in treating the buckets plus the Average Household Gravity Manipulation Device(tm) as a closed system, when it is not. The AHGMD, just like the pump, would require energy from the outside in order to continue operating. Without that energy, the AHGMD shuts down, the gravitiational "shielding" stops, and so does your "perpetual" motion device.
So, even with gravitational repulsion, in this house, we still obey the laws of thermodynamics.
(Actually, I think I can come up with an explanation that doesn't require a powered AHGMD, but I'm not quite so certain as to its validity.)
Check your own facts, bub. It is quite clearly the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator (spelling of 'Illudium' may vary). If you want to claim something else, find an audio clip.
(I just love the way Marvin the Martian says "modulator".)
--
The solar sail did not fail, the system for getting it to orbit did. The title should read "Conventional Rocketry Fails Again".
--
I think everybody already knew that the science, engineering, and economics of the station suck. The news here is that we've got an overly expensive space station that is pretty much useless for doing science work, doesn't show the progress in space station design that one would expect in the 15 years since the first piece of Mir was put into orbit, AND isn't even a nice place to visit.
Sometimes I think it would be cheaper for NASA to figure out a way to haul a nuclear submarine into orbit, and use that for a space station, than for them to continue to try to make the ISS work.
--
Much like how the national news broadcasters were having fun showing the 18-wheelers floating around on Interstate 10 in Houston last month.
--
US states with a rural interstate speed limit of 75 mph:
US states with a rural interstate speed limit of 70 mph:
Speed limits in urban areas tend to be lower, due to heavier traffic and more frequent lane changes.
(Data is from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety - Highway Loss Data Institute, and claims to be current as of June 2001.)
--
The Chinese could decode ultra-secure CSS encoded video orders to US submarines transmitted via the ELF antennas in Michigan and Wisconsin.
(Now, to see who is smart enough to figure out what is wrong with the above.)
(OT: I wish slashdot would allow the <small> tag)
--
Why am I reminded of the Babylon 5 episode Conflicts of Interest?
--
I would argue that the greatest trick Bill Gates pulled was managing to succeed in using the same trick repeatedly to build a corporate empire.
A quote:
That is everyone's favorite Hitchhiker, the late Douglas Adams. He wass speaking about Windows 95 (New! Improved! Almost as good as a Mac!). You are not the only one to realize that Microsoft has pulled this trick, but it must be made clear that they have done so before, and will most likely try it again.
--
Yeah, the A-Team could build anything. Oh, wait "a team", not the "A-Team". Nevermind.
(I pity the fool who can't spell "roketier" correctly!)
--
No, no no NO NO NO! Teflon (PTFE) was not invented by NASA. Teflon was not even invented by someone else for the space program. Teflon was "invented" by accident at DuPont in 1938
(to be truly anal, I should be using the ® mark after Teflon, but I'm not. Neener-neener-neener.)
--
I could be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure that once a guilty verdict has been issued, you can't drop the charges.
They could of course give up in spirit and not bother to show up at the new sentencing hearings, but that seems a bit silly even for the current administration.
--
ARRRGHH...must...resist...
sigh.
Cashews technically aren't nuts, they're seeds. That's why you'll never find cashews sold in their shells.
At least I restrained myself from correcting your spelling of "halucinigenic".
--
One of the more common uses of genetic engineering in relation to crops seems to be to cause the plant to produce its own pesticides. It's not hard to imagine that those pesticides could have mutagenic or carcinogenic properties. Not that the difference between the plant making the pesticides itself or the plant absorbing the same pesticides sprayed onto it would necessarily be that great.
--
And here I was thinking Chemical X gave living organisms super powers. Silly me.
--
That would be typhoons, not tsunamis. Tsunamis are generally caused by earthquakes. Although I suppose one could devise a scenario where the force generated by the butterfly's wings cascades through the ground, causing subtle changes in location and friction ultimately leading to an earthquake, the term Buttefly Effect is generally used to refer to the effects on meteorological conditions.
Veering even further offtopic, the original formulation of the idea apparently involved a sea gull!
--
Dude. Both of those quotes are referring to the GeForce 2 GTS. The Tom Duff post to comp.graphics.rendering.renderman is over a year old. The review being posted is about the GeForce 3.
Yes, much of what Tom Duff said probably still holds true, but let's try to quote material that is actually referring to the subject at hand, mm'kay?
--
--
The solution to the sociological problem is to determine that the problem exists, then punish the offenders. That is, go out and look at all the fields, see if the numbers match up, and if they don't, then prosecute. This is not a technological solution, unless you consider eyes and a brain technology.
There is a problem of limited resources in the "go out and look at all the fields" step. The technological solution is being applied to the problem of not having enough resources to check large numbers of fields efficiently.
--
Funny you should say that. Keenspot Premium. $4.95 a month, no ads. It's new, so I'm not sure how well it is working.
This has a negative side effect of centralization. If one of the comics is unavailable, it is almost certain that all of the comics are unavailable. With Keenspot, it seems they suffer a major failure roughly once a month.
--
I once read AI described as being a solution to a problem whose solution is unknown. A system would cease to be AI when the solution becomes known, even if the system hasn't changed.
I don't recall the exact example given, but it went something like this: You have a problem that you do not know the solution to, let's say how to determine the volume of a sphere given its radius. You can measure the radius, and you can measure the volume, but you cannot determine the relationship between them. So you throw a neural network at some test measurments, and it starts spitting out correct results. AI at work! But then, you study what the neural net is doing, and determine that it is simply applying the formula (4/3)pi*r^3 to the radius. The neural net hasn't changed, but now that you know the formula it has become just a fancy way of executing a few floating point multiplications. Is it still AI?
I find this definition useful, even if it does suffer from a sort of Heisenbergian uncertainty principle (it might be AI, but only if you don't look at what it is actually doing). This also leads to the interesting case that a system may appear to be AI to an outside observer, but only a simple rule system to the person who programmed it.
--
Sometimes, when I see the moderation on a comment, I wish there was a "moderator goal" menu when performing moderation. I would like to know if the person who gave this silly troll a +1 insightful was being silly himself, trying to bring about the collapse of slashdot, or simply smoking dried cat feces.
--
The Apple Store offers build to order. The options are comparable to what you would find at Dell or Gateway's online stores. You can order some strange configurations, like a G4 with 2 60 gig IDE drives, 1.5 gigs of RAM, and 4 video cards.
I would say that if you've replaced the motherboard and the CPU, you really don't have the same computer any more, but this is a matter of opinion, so I'm not going to argue it.
Bullshit. Apple has 8 SCSI options for the G4 desktop ranging from a single 36 gig drive to triple 72 giggers. You can't get SCSI in an iMac, but you don't buy an iMac for that kind of speed.
Finally!? They switched to PCI in 1995!
This says to me you haven't seen a Mac built since 1997, and that they were the low-end family targetted models at that. Current G4s have 3 PCI slots and 1 AGP. Some earlier models, such as the ever-popular 9600, had six slots. Most models had three.
If you want to complain about Apple, complain about real problems. Complain about the exorbitant cost of RAM and drives (just because you can get SCSI at the Apple store, that doesn't mean you should). Complain about the crufty OS. Complain about the PowerPC chips falling behind in performance. Hell, complain about the CEO being insane, I don't care. Just don't complain about problems you've imagined.
--
And to that I say," bullshit ". Teflon was "invented" accidentally in 1938 by a DuPont chemist doing research work on refrigerants. While NASA makes heavy use of Teflon, they had nothing to do with its invention.
--
So who gets to enforce the charter on .xxx? =)
This, and other parts of the Topic, suggest that ICANN is looking at actually enforcing the distinctions in any new TLDs. So if you go to mcdonalds.banc, you likely won't be getting an ad for Big Macs.
Another interesting tidbit is:
Which seems to imply that if a person named Ford registers ford under a TLD reserved for personal domain names, any claim by the auto maker would (in theory) be ignored.
The last piece I'm going to point out is the timeline. The official announcment of the addition of any new TLDs won't be happening until November 1. Contracts between ICANN and registrars have a deadline of December 1. There is no mention of when the TLDs become available, but one would assume it would be after the contracts are finalized. (Please note that the schedule is only suggested and not final)