Simple thermodynamics, rate of heat transfer proportional to the difference in heat. I don't cite a source because it's, well, just simple thermodynamics. I don't give exact numbers because I don't know them, and freely admit so; the principle holds. In days, weeks, even years, doesn't much matter, the heat will be gone into outer space. To affect the sytem, one must either change the input rate in the long term ('raise the room temperature'), or affect the outgoing rate by manipulating things like the CO2 level.
Actually, your argument provides a nice counter-example. How much nicer was QuakeGL then Quake? And QuakeGL still didn't use all of OpenGL, even for the time. Transparency was so hard to do in software that Quake II still used stippling instead in software.
Even the geniuses at iD didn't get software OpenGL-class software renderers. It would have been too slow.
The caching proxy down at your local ISP however has the sole purpose of depriving their uplinks of revenues.
This doesn't even make sense. I suggest reviewing the structure of the internet. The act of viewing copyrighted content does NOT pay any money to the copyright holder. Correctly-functioning caches do not interfere with ad viewing, or any other revenue form I am aware of. (Indeed, they should correctly cache the content, but not the ad views, resulting in a net gain for any content creator over an uncached viewer visiting their site. Most content sites probably aren't careful enough with their headers to enable this, though.)
Micropayments are a Good Idea That Will Probably Never Happen, but they do not exist yet.
ISPs put up caching proxies for the Sole Purpose of saving themselves money, or sometimes even enabling people to access the internet at all.
Re ISPs and caching proxies, your statement that they have no right to do this is not entirely correct. Under certain well-defined conditions, the DMCA can protect these types of uses. In fact, it's one part of the DMCA I would not like to see go away; this form of protection enables applications like Google and said proxies (often necessary for technical reasons) to exist safely, which is good.
Remember, even I frequently call the DMCA evil, but the safe-harbor provisions are something of a redeeming value. It's just the anti-circumvention provisions we hate, and assorted other detrious worth disposing of.
I agree completely. These next ten years look like they may well parrellel the fifties.
The bad news is that that means 2010 may be a replay of the sixties.
The problem is a lack of balance; as sucky as the fifties were, the sixties weren't all the cool either, though I admit I like the culture. By and large, the rebound was too big. I'm not sure there ever was a balance, except perhaps the nineties? Of course, as soon as a balance exists, complacency sets in, conservatism sets in, and around we go again.
I suspect the 2010s will make the 60's seem repressed. Since history is speeding up (ref: look up extropians), it may even happen sooner. 2006 or 2007 may be quite interesting.
This is either a troll (as the last paragraph hints at), or someone who, like the vast majority of people who go on about the environment, have basically no clue about the enviroment, up to and including many environmental scientists (a degree and a lot of schooling is still no guarentee that one can understand on even a superficial level such an interrelated and complicated system). I do not exclude myself from this general condemnation, though IMHO I at least have a clue at how freakin' complicated this sort of thing can be. Let me show you why the parent post is too naive to be of value.
Basically, heat is aggressively non-linear. Just because you add a thousand gigajoules of heat to the planet does not mean the planet is a thousand gagijoules hotter. That's only true for an instantaneously fast heat addition (asteroid strike?) and then still only true instantaneously after the heat addition. Immediately, the planet begins radiating away any energy it has that brings its temperature above the local background temperature. Within hours, the heat of the planet with the addition of the heat and without the addition of the heat may vary by only a single-digit percentage of your added heat; within days, the effect is negligible.
To truly heat the planet in this manner, you need huge amounts of energy dumped into the environment on a long-term level. Note that even the energy inputted into the enviroment by the Earth's volcanic activity isn't enough to heat the planet much. Mankind's contribution is virtually nil in this fashion; it's so small it doesn't even register.
The hotter you want to heat something in this manner, the more energy you'll have to add, exponentially; the hotter the planet is then it "should" be, the faster the heat will leave.
The CO2 works in another manner; it prevents the heat radiation from leaving the planet. Now, this can have a real, measurable effect, though it is debatable about exactly what that effect is, because the planet's interconnectedness continues to defy our analysis to date. (Ref: Examine the hypothesized "oceanic CO2 sink", which may or may not exist, which may or may not someday fill up, which may or may not be affecting our environment, which may or may not be a disaster waiting to happen... you get the point here, right? The key is "may or may not".) Preventing the radiation from leaving affects the ability of the sun, the only source of heat large enough to matter compared to anything else, to heat the planet. This may directly affect the temperature of the planet.
Then again, there may be processes to counter this, and our contributions also decay over time (though perhaps not in a time that we care about).
This sort of problem is the reason why I hesitate to believe anyone who flatly claims that "The world is heating up, it's largely Mankinds fault, and this is a bad thing that we must put a stop to." We are barely capable of giving compelling evidence for the first, though we still can't justify trends into the future very well. The second is still highly speculative, as we can't claim to understand the planet well enough to prove why the temp may be climbing, except that the sun putting out more or less heat is pretty damned obvious, and as the only input to the system of value, pretty damned importent and I think seriously understated in the popular press. (I hope it's not underestimated in the climatology community itself, in a zealous effort to get funded.) The third is downright irresponsible; beyond the first-order effect that the sea level will rise some number of feet, an amazingly unimportent effect overall (what, are we supposed to believe that people are actually going to drown because they refuse to leave their now 3-feet under water homes? Maybe they deserve to, if they're too slow to get out of the way of a multi-year process!), we don't much know what will happen. It may even be wonderfully beneficial; the dinosaur-era plant life seems to have liked it. Perhaps it will double the world's fertile soil? Perhaps it will kill us all? Who knows?
Chill out a bit and enjoy the ride. The environment should be cared for, but we're still a long way from being able to dogmatically assert much about the environment in general. I'd be much more worried about dumping toxins in our local environment, or just the general inefficiencies of our industrial processes (being slowly rectified), then getting up in arms about a climate process that will probably happen without us anyhow, and nobody has ever made a compelling case for being a disaster anyhow.
It's hard to respect a project that plops an urban legend right down in the first paragraph, regardless of the validity or merit of the project. So now it's pretty hard for me to evaluate this project fairly. Presentation matters!
Think of my example as a recursive example; my point is just because a triangle can be decomposed into three pieces is not a proof that the triangle doesn't exist. Apply the point recursively as deeply as you care.
Just because a real-world triangle may consist of untold quintillions of super-strings doesn't mean the triangle doesn't exist, it just means your human mind can't hold both frames of reference at the same time. It's a human limitation, not a universe-al one.
The biggest outstanding problem with relativity is that it doesn't completely work on the quantum scale. One of the biggest outstanding problems with quantum theory is it doesn't completely work on the macroscopic scale. A fully-complete theory of the universe should explain both.
For more details and clarifications, consult an appropraite source, not Slashdot.;-) There's probably a good FAQ on this somewhere.
That time may or may not be a derived quantity is irrelevant; I am no less sunburned even as I write for "electromagnetic radiation" being properly a derived thing from the nature of the universe. Derived things exist! A triangle is still real for being made up of three line segments. The angles of the triangle are still real too, despite needing two lines to exist.
Of course, you can only accept the parent of this post by tossing all logic out the window.
Time most assuredly does exist. I am perceiving time, therefore I am perceiving something. Whatever this something is, I define as "time". Viola.
You may think you can wiggle out of this by claiming that what I'm perceiving is an illusion, but no such luck; I define your claimed illusion as "time" (without conceding your illusion point.) It doesn't matter how you try to do this, I can always go one meta-level higher. You can't win without throwing out logic, at which point I declare moral victory anyhow.
The parent is really a hidden instance of "overgeneralization".
"I know of this thing 'x'", where "x" is "time" today (no pun intended).
"This thing 'x' does not exist."
"Therefore, no thing thought of under the word 'x' exists."
I hope I don't need to spell out why that's fallacious logic? (Hint: Just because you don't understand something doesn't affect the universe. Hint 2: You can't go "Newtonian gravity is incorrect. Therefore, there is no such thing as gravity." It's the same form, honest.)
Of course the universe cannot be totally explained and there's a lot of mystery out there. Indeed, that's exactly why making up fake mystery is a waste of time! There's plenty to exercise your sense of wonder on or whatever other reason your subconcious is rebelling at this message for; why make up fake stuff like this? You need all the help you can get; throwing out logic pretty much leaves you adrift, with no clue. You wanna be that way, fine, no skin off my nose, but don't suffer under the illusion that you're any more 'enlightened' then me.
Re:Moving production to Asia?
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Amplifying that sentiment, some of us have been in the nasty situations and still feel as pinkUZI does.
Not all of us drop our ethics/beliefs the instant they become inconvenient. Yeah, yeah, a distinctly 1800's sentiment, I know. We're so much more enlightened in our self-interest in the 2000's.
Actually, Doom III has been run several times at its highest setting, using only a vanishing fraction of that power. Additionally, it was run in a multi-player extended campaign mode at some points, sometimes with as many as millions participating.
Unfortunately, there was a bug in this implementation, as there was no-respawning. This has limited the replay value of Doom III - Universe Edition (commonly known as "War"). There have been some seriously interesting coding innovations in the last few years though, which are major upgrades over the conventional swords and shields of years past. I'm quite partial to the "Jet Plane" mod.
Yes, but ask yourself, why don't they now? When you've fully answered that question, you'll understand why that's a last ditch effort to patch a working system together, rather then something we can just switch to without any particular hassle. (The interconnectedness of this stuff is amazing. You can't "just" switch to something that costs multiple times more then gas without horrible effects on the economy, which will directly translate to people starving if things get bad enough.)
Also, you may be surprised; depth perception in humans is an interesting field of study. Less of it comes from your eyes then you may think; most of it comes from image processing. Your binocular vision has effectively no discrimination past six feet or something like that; I'd have to look the exact number up but it's shorter then most people would think.
I probably ought to clarify that. In this domain the computer can indeed get a good depth perception shot if it wants. My point is that even humans make less use of this data then you might think, even at close range. Giving it to a computer adds new problems (handling that data), which may or may not be helpful anytime soon.
"Some people, when confronted with a problem, think ``I know, I'll use regular expressions.'' Now they have two problems." - jwz. It's similar to this, I think. Merely throwing more data at a vision problem often adds to the problem list more then it takes away, at our present state of knowlege.
(Of course all of this is moot anyhow, because the math says even a human being isn't accurate enough to function as a facial recognition system anyhow. Computers aren't going to solve the problem. Nothing ever will. The math says it's impossible.)
And though it would require more computing power, it is much easier to make a positive match using three-dimensional data as opposed to two.
Unfortunately, this apparently simple statement is not as true as it would seem to you, a human being equipped with staggeringly immense computational power and a brain specially equipped for this very task.
In vision, there are two problems (at least). One is the usual problem of creating algorithms that can recognize things. The other is the staggering amount of data these algorithms must cope with.
Many common vision applications (by which I mean not necessarily face recognition) involve taking the picture, which may start life at any resolution you please, sampling it down to 32x32 or 64x64 (if you're willing to stretch), dropping down to 4 or 6 bits color, and proceeding to do the analysis on this exponentially smaller sample size.
Facial recognition algorithms do not always (often?) do this, but the problem of dealing with immense amounts of data do not go away. They simply exist in different ways. You're still trying to get invarient data (recognizing "bob #2423" no matter what bob is doing to fool the camera) out of a domain that has 2^(100*100*24) possible images (for a 100x100 full color RGB image; keep going up if you want something larger then 100x100, which is barely ID-photo sized.)
Throwing more data at the problem does not necessarily get you ahead. You must always throw out the vast majority of it anyhow to get any real work done.
(Also, you may be surprised; depth perception in humans is an interesting field of study. Less of it comes from your eyes then you may think; most of it comes from image processing. Your binocular vision has effectively no discrimination past six feet or something like that; I'd have to look the exact number up but it's shorter then most people would think.)
The interconnectedness of the civilized, technological world is truly staggering. As near as I can see, even many who pay lip service to this concept (including many Eastern-influenced philosophers and religions) are only touching the edges of the issue... I don't claim to understand it myself but I think I can safely claim that at least I have a grasp on the level of my ignorance...
Removing the petroleum products at this point in history would be like going up to the original poster and insisting that he now consume only as much food as he did when he was one month old in the womb. (I think the proportions are about right on that too, if you work the math; call it two months in the womb for a healthy safety margin.) You don't shrink back down to the size of a one-month-old child, you just die. Human civilization is a bit more granular, so not every human would necessarily die, but the shock would be similar in scale. (On a high enough abstraction level, the result of suddenly depriving the world of all petroleum products would indeed somewhat resemble what a doctor would call "shock" in a human body.)
We would "get over it" by returning to pre-industrial levels of living, up to and including pre-industrial levels of food output, food storage, and food distribution. In other words, a world previously capable of supporting 6+ billion can suddenly only support a couple hundred million. (And the sweeping plagues and lack of primitive-type distribution mechanisms may leave only tens of millions around the world. My local farmers could never support this area.)
We wouldn't have time to switch. Food would cease to flow in a matter of days after such a catastrophe.
At the most basic level, civilization is a method of distributing food and water, and removing waste. Disrupt those flows, and it's all over. No time to switch, no second chances, just riots in the street and massive plagues.
Yes, we're very dependent on it...
No, we're not just sorta "dependent" on it. We are "totally f*ing dependent on it for food, water, medical suppilies, shelter, everything, our very lives". (Uncensor that mentally for my real point.) There's a difference!
I don't think you adequately grasp the scales being dealt with here, and how thoroughly everything you touch is dependent on our petroleum culture. (And how much work and knowlege it will take to get us off of that culture.)
My quote is from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". In it, one of the main sci-fi devices the author postulates is an "improbability field", which can make events of various improbabilities occur. This makes for a very, very wacky Universe, which was the main point of the book series. (It took me many years to realize that once you accept the Improbability Field, the wackiness of that universe inevitably follows, meaning that as humourous as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is, it's actually hard-core sci-fi.)
To handle the Improbability fields, in particular the Infinite Improbability Field generated by one of the main ships featured in the novels, improbability mathematics exists. In that mathematics, "two to the power of infinity minus one" has some meaning, undefined because A: We probably wouldn't understand it and B: Who really cares? (Personally, I think Douglas Adams just got lucky in meeting the criterion for hard sci-fi; math and tech don't much figure into the stories.)
So, having thoroughly explained and ruined the joke, that's where my post came from. You seem earnest and honest, so I'll give you a similar explanation.;-)
They have repeatedly claimed, with varying levels of directness, that the reason they must ban people from using Open Source and the reason that Open Source is evil is that the use their customers make of Open Source (GPL'ed) software is that it will obligate Microsoft to do something. Yes, the claim has been made, with varying levels of directness.
Slashdot covered this, but unfortunately, I can't find the reference; one side effect of letting people comment on articles is that nearly every article matches a given search term. In particular there was one article about some SDK (for embedded devices, I think) that contained in the licensing agreement the provision that no software which might obligate Microsoft to release their code could be compiled with the SDK.
The point is, the claim that such software exists, clearly directed at the GPL, and clearly successful to some extent in that I've had to deal with people who believe this 'contamination' happens, is false. No such software exists. You'll never hear them point to a piece of software and finger it as a problem; they can't claim this totally directly. But it's perfectly clear cut what they are trying to imply, because they are getting as close as they possibly can to claiming this. (And again... it's working on some people; they are convincing people that using GPL software will infect their own IP. You can be quite sure that's not an accident.)
Nothing a user of Microsoft software can do, developer or otherwise, can possibly obligate Microsoft in the slightest. It's impossible. As impossible as trying to come up with a scenario where I somehow create a legal obligation for you based on the posting you just created.
I can make a derivative work with your posting and try to Open Content it, but all the means is that I had no right to Open Content your post in the first place. Nothing I do can aquire those rights by fiat. Nothing I do can obligate you without your consent.
This line from Microsoft angers me, because it goes beyond FUD, beyond number juggling, beyond threats, beyond monopolistic manipulation. It's not FUD, it's another three-letter word you may be familiar with: L I E. It's a flat-out lie. And they know it.
After those modifications, I'm afraid the previously-finite odds will be 2 to the power of Infinity minus one, an irrational number which only has application in Improbability Physics.
Oops, wrong sci-fi series. We'll be restoring normalacy just as soon we are sure what is normal anyhow. Thank you!
A pause in the mad rush for speed might give some time to think of what to *do* with all that power.
You suffer from the fallacious idea that all anybody does is pursue better processors. A simple look around you will reveal that "the industry" as a whole dedicates some small percentage (probably less then 10% measured by cash) of its efforts in this direction. The rest of are... thinking what to "do" with all that power.
Re-assigning processor engineers to figure out what to "do" with that power would be a waste anyways. They design processors, they don't write window managers.
Really, just look around; this is a rather simple to debunk with just your eyes, unless you live in a fabrication facility... sheesh!
Re:Good question... It's taken care off...
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This "I can get away with it as long as I don't get caught" mentality is positively sickening.
You may find it sickening, but
It's the way the law works! It's not like the original poster was making it up, that's how the DMCA covers this exact situation. Look it up for yourself.
How else do you expect it to work? Emphasis on work, not expect like you might read it at first. Ethically, it's just not my problem to figure out whether your works are being infringed, and practically, it's impossible for any non-trivial service to decide whether a given piece of content is copyrighted. Are you going to look at each and every comment posted on Slashdot, determine whether its copyrighted by someone other then the poster, further determine whether the poster has permission to post it to Slashdot (which they may!), and then take corrective action? Do you want that job? Does anybody?
It's just not practical to expect any service that allows content posting to check everything, if for no other reason then you have to check for permission, in addition to copyright status! That's why the DMCA distributes the responsibility back to the copyright holders. It can't work any other way. Like I said, you may find it sickening, but not only is it the way it works, it's the only way it can work. (And remember... Napster never posted a copyrighted song on their service. Place the blame where it belongs, with the violators.)
Slashdot Mirror
Simple thermodynamics, rate of heat transfer proportional to the difference in heat. I don't cite a source because it's, well, just simple thermodynamics. I don't give exact numbers because I don't know them, and freely admit so; the principle holds. In days, weeks, even years, doesn't much matter, the heat will be gone into outer space. To affect the sytem, one must either change the input rate in the long term ('raise the room temperature'), or affect the outgoing rate by manipulating things like the CO2 level.
Actually, your argument provides a nice counter-example. How much nicer was QuakeGL then Quake? And QuakeGL still didn't use all of OpenGL, even for the time. Transparency was so hard to do in software that Quake II still used stippling instead in software.
Even the geniuses at iD didn't get software OpenGL-class software renderers. It would have been too slow.
The caching proxy down at your local ISP however has the sole purpose of depriving their uplinks of revenues.
This doesn't even make sense. I suggest reviewing the structure of the internet. The act of viewing copyrighted content does NOT pay any money to the copyright holder. Correctly-functioning caches do not interfere with ad viewing, or any other revenue form I am aware of. (Indeed, they should correctly cache the content, but not the ad views, resulting in a net gain for any content creator over an uncached viewer visiting their site. Most content sites probably aren't careful enough with their headers to enable this, though.)
Micropayments are a Good Idea That Will Probably Never Happen, but they do not exist yet.
ISPs put up caching proxies for the Sole Purpose of saving themselves money, or sometimes even enabling people to access the internet at all.
Re ISPs and caching proxies, your statement that they have no right to do this is not entirely correct. Under certain well-defined conditions, the DMCA can protect these types of uses. In fact, it's one part of the DMCA I would not like to see go away; this form of protection enables applications like Google and said proxies (often necessary for technical reasons) to exist safely, which is good.
Remember, even I frequently call the DMCA evil, but the safe-harbor provisions are something of a redeeming value. It's just the anti-circumvention provisions we hate, and assorted other detrious worth disposing of.
I agree completely. These next ten years look like they may well parrellel the fifties.
The bad news is that that means 2010 may be a replay of the sixties.
The problem is a lack of balance; as sucky as the fifties were, the sixties weren't all the cool either, though I admit I like the culture. By and large, the rebound was too big. I'm not sure there ever was a balance, except perhaps the nineties? Of course, as soon as a balance exists, complacency sets in, conservatism sets in, and around we go again.
I suspect the 2010s will make the 60's seem repressed. Since history is speeding up (ref: look up extropians), it may even happen sooner. 2006 or 2007 may be quite interesting.
This is either a troll (as the last paragraph hints at), or someone who, like the vast majority of people who go on about the environment, have basically no clue about the enviroment, up to and including many environmental scientists (a degree and a lot of schooling is still no guarentee that one can understand on even a superficial level such an interrelated and complicated system). I do not exclude myself from this general condemnation, though IMHO I at least have a clue at how freakin' complicated this sort of thing can be. Let me show you why the parent post is too naive to be of value.
Basically, heat is aggressively non-linear. Just because you add a thousand gigajoules of heat to the planet does not mean the planet is a thousand gagijoules hotter. That's only true for an instantaneously fast heat addition (asteroid strike?) and then still only true instantaneously after the heat addition. Immediately, the planet begins radiating away any energy it has that brings its temperature above the local background temperature. Within hours, the heat of the planet with the addition of the heat and without the addition of the heat may vary by only a single-digit percentage of your added heat; within days, the effect is negligible.
To truly heat the planet in this manner, you need huge amounts of energy dumped into the environment on a long-term level. Note that even the energy inputted into the enviroment by the Earth's volcanic activity isn't enough to heat the planet much. Mankind's contribution is virtually nil in this fashion; it's so small it doesn't even register.
The hotter you want to heat something in this manner, the more energy you'll have to add, exponentially; the hotter the planet is then it "should" be, the faster the heat will leave.
The CO2 works in another manner; it prevents the heat radiation from leaving the planet. Now, this can have a real, measurable effect, though it is debatable about exactly what that effect is, because the planet's interconnectedness continues to defy our analysis to date. (Ref: Examine the hypothesized "oceanic CO2 sink", which may or may not exist, which may or may not someday fill up, which may or may not be affecting our environment, which may or may not be a disaster waiting to happen... you get the point here, right? The key is "may or may not".) Preventing the radiation from leaving affects the ability of the sun, the only source of heat large enough to matter compared to anything else, to heat the planet. This may directly affect the temperature of the planet.
Then again, there may be processes to counter this, and our contributions also decay over time (though perhaps not in a time that we care about).
This sort of problem is the reason why I hesitate to believe anyone who flatly claims that "The world is heating up, it's largely Mankinds fault, and this is a bad thing that we must put a stop to." We are barely capable of giving compelling evidence for the first, though we still can't justify trends into the future very well. The second is still highly speculative, as we can't claim to understand the planet well enough to prove why the temp may be climbing, except that the sun putting out more or less heat is pretty damned obvious, and as the only input to the system of value, pretty damned importent and I think seriously understated in the popular press. (I hope it's not underestimated in the climatology community itself, in a zealous effort to get funded.) The third is downright irresponsible; beyond the first-order effect that the sea level will rise some number of feet, an amazingly unimportent effect overall (what, are we supposed to believe that people are actually going to drown because they refuse to leave their now 3-feet under water homes? Maybe they deserve to, if they're too slow to get out of the way of a multi-year process!), we don't much know what will happen. It may even be wonderfully beneficial; the dinosaur-era plant life seems to have liked it. Perhaps it will double the world's fertile soil? Perhaps it will kill us all? Who knows?
Chill out a bit and enjoy the ride. The environment should be cared for, but we're still a long way from being able to dogmatically assert much about the environment in general. I'd be much more worried about dumping toxins in our local environment, or just the general inefficiencies of our industrial processes (being slowly rectified), then getting up in arms about a climate process that will probably happen without us anyhow, and nobody has ever made a compelling case for being a disaster anyhow.
Also see SNOPES.
It's hard to respect a project that plops an urban legend right down in the first paragraph, regardless of the validity or merit of the project. So now it's pretty hard for me to evaluate this project fairly. Presentation matters!
Think of my example as a recursive example; my point is just because a triangle can be decomposed into three pieces is not a proof that the triangle doesn't exist. Apply the point recursively as deeply as you care.
Just because a real-world triangle may consist of untold quintillions of super-strings doesn't mean the triangle doesn't exist, it just means your human mind can't hold both frames of reference at the same time. It's a human limitation, not a universe-al one.
The biggest outstanding problem with relativity is that it doesn't completely work on the quantum scale. One of the biggest outstanding problems with quantum theory is it doesn't completely work on the macroscopic scale. A fully-complete theory of the universe should explain both.
;-) There's probably a good FAQ on this somewhere.
For more details and clarifications, consult an appropraite source, not Slashdot.
That time may or may not be a derived quantity is irrelevant; I am no less sunburned even as I write for "electromagnetic radiation" being properly a derived thing from the nature of the universe. Derived things exist! A triangle is still real for being made up of three line segments. The angles of the triangle are still real too, despite needing two lines to exist.
Time most assuredly does exist. I am perceiving time, therefore I am perceiving something. Whatever this something is, I define as "time". Viola.
You may think you can wiggle out of this by claiming that what I'm perceiving is an illusion, but no such luck; I define your claimed illusion as "time" (without conceding your illusion point.) It doesn't matter how you try to do this, I can always go one meta-level higher. You can't win without throwing out logic, at which point I declare moral victory anyhow.
The parent is really a hidden instance of "overgeneralization".
- "I know of this thing 'x'", where "x" is "time" today (no pun intended).
- "This thing 'x' does not exist."
- "Therefore, no thing thought of under the word 'x' exists."
I hope I don't need to spell out why that's fallacious logic? (Hint: Just because you don't understand something doesn't affect the universe. Hint 2: You can't go "Newtonian gravity is incorrect. Therefore, there is no such thing as gravity." It's the same form, honest.)Of course the universe cannot be totally explained and there's a lot of mystery out there. Indeed, that's exactly why making up fake mystery is a waste of time! There's plenty to exercise your sense of wonder on or whatever other reason your subconcious is rebelling at this message for; why make up fake stuff like this? You need all the help you can get; throwing out logic pretty much leaves you adrift, with no clue. You wanna be that way, fine, no skin off my nose, but don't suffer under the illusion that you're any more 'enlightened' then me.
Amplifying that sentiment, some of us have been in the nasty situations and still feel as pinkUZI does.
Not all of us drop our ethics/beliefs the instant they become inconvenient. Yeah, yeah, a distinctly 1800's sentiment, I know. We're so much more enlightened in our self-interest in the 2000's.
Unfortunately, gameplay has become quite unbalanced, as only the Red White & Blue team has access to some of the best of these mods.
Actually, Doom III has been run several times at its highest setting, using only a vanishing fraction of that power. Additionally, it was run in a multi-player extended campaign mode at some points, sometimes with as many as millions participating.
Unfortunately, there was a bug in this implementation, as there was no-respawning. This has limited the replay value of Doom III - Universe Edition (commonly known as "War"). There have been some seriously interesting coding innovations in the last few years though, which are major upgrades over the conventional swords and shields of years past. I'm quite partial to the "Jet Plane" mod.
Yes, but ask yourself, why don't they now? When you've fully answered that question, you'll understand why that's a last ditch effort to patch a working system together, rather then something we can just switch to without any particular hassle. (The interconnectedness of this stuff is amazing. You can't "just" switch to something that costs multiple times more then gas without horrible effects on the economy, which will directly translate to people starving if things get bad enough.)
Also, you may be surprised; depth perception in humans is an interesting field of study. Less of it comes from your eyes then you may think; most of it comes from image processing. Your binocular vision has effectively no discrimination past six feet or something like that; I'd have to look the exact number up but it's shorter then most people would think.
I probably ought to clarify that. In this domain the computer can indeed get a good depth perception shot if it wants. My point is that even humans make less use of this data then you might think, even at close range. Giving it to a computer adds new problems (handling that data), which may or may not be helpful anytime soon.
"Some people, when confronted with a problem, think ``I know, I'll use regular expressions.'' Now they have two problems." - jwz. It's similar to this, I think. Merely throwing more data at a vision problem often adds to the problem list more then it takes away, at our present state of knowlege.
(Of course all of this is moot anyhow, because the math says even a human being isn't accurate enough to function as a facial recognition system anyhow. Computers aren't going to solve the problem. Nothing ever will. The math says it's impossible.)
And though it would require more computing power, it is much easier to make a positive match using three-dimensional data as opposed to two.
Unfortunately, this apparently simple statement is not as true as it would seem to you, a human being equipped with staggeringly immense computational power and a brain specially equipped for this very task.
In vision, there are two problems (at least). One is the usual problem of creating algorithms that can recognize things. The other is the staggering amount of data these algorithms must cope with.
Many common vision applications (by which I mean not necessarily face recognition) involve taking the picture, which may start life at any resolution you please, sampling it down to 32x32 or 64x64 (if you're willing to stretch), dropping down to 4 or 6 bits color, and proceeding to do the analysis on this exponentially smaller sample size.
Facial recognition algorithms do not always (often?) do this, but the problem of dealing with immense amounts of data do not go away. They simply exist in different ways. You're still trying to get invarient data (recognizing "bob #2423" no matter what bob is doing to fool the camera) out of a domain that has 2^(100*100*24) possible images (for a 100x100 full color RGB image; keep going up if you want something larger then 100x100, which is barely ID-photo sized.)
Throwing more data at the problem does not necessarily get you ahead. You must always throw out the vast majority of it anyhow to get any real work done.
(Also, you may be surprised; depth perception in humans is an interesting field of study. Less of it comes from your eyes then you may think; most of it comes from image processing. Your binocular vision has effectively no discrimination past six feet or something like that; I'd have to look the exact number up but it's shorter then most people would think.)
"Me too."
The interconnectedness of the civilized, technological world is truly staggering. As near as I can see, even many who pay lip service to this concept (including many Eastern-influenced philosophers and religions) are only touching the edges of the issue... I don't claim to understand it myself but I think I can safely claim that at least I have a grasp on the level of my ignorance...
Removing the petroleum products at this point in history would be like going up to the original poster and insisting that he now consume only as much food as he did when he was one month old in the womb. (I think the proportions are about right on that too, if you work the math; call it two months in the womb for a healthy safety margin.) You don't shrink back down to the size of a one-month-old child, you just die. Human civilization is a bit more granular, so not every human would necessarily die, but the shock would be similar in scale. (On a high enough abstraction level, the result of suddenly depriving the world of all petroleum products would indeed somewhat resemble what a doctor would call "shock" in a human body.)
We would "get over it" by returning to pre-industrial levels of living, up to and including pre-industrial levels of food output, food storage, and food distribution. In other words, a world previously capable of supporting 6+ billion can suddenly only support a couple hundred million. (And the sweeping plagues and lack of primitive-type distribution mechanisms may leave only tens of millions around the world. My local farmers could never support this area.)
We wouldn't have time to switch. Food would cease to flow in a matter of days after such a catastrophe.
At the most basic level, civilization is a method of distributing food and water, and removing waste. Disrupt those flows, and it's all over. No time to switch, no second chances, just riots in the street and massive plagues.
Yes, we're very dependent on it...
No, we're not just sorta "dependent" on it. We are " totally f*ing dependent on it for food, water, medical suppilies, shelter, everything, our very lives ". (Uncensor that mentally for my real point.) There's a difference!
I don't think you adequately grasp the scales being dealt with here, and how thoroughly everything you touch is dependent on our petroleum culture. (And how much work and knowlege it will take to get us off of that culture.)
You're right in the real world.
;-)
My quote is from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". In it, one of the main sci-fi devices the author postulates is an "improbability field", which can make events of various improbabilities occur. This makes for a very, very wacky Universe, which was the main point of the book series. (It took me many years to realize that once you accept the Improbability Field, the wackiness of that universe inevitably follows, meaning that as humourous as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is, it's actually hard-core sci-fi.)
To handle the Improbability fields, in particular the Infinite Improbability Field generated by one of the main ships featured in the novels, improbability mathematics exists. In that mathematics, "two to the power of infinity minus one" has some meaning, undefined because A: We probably wouldn't understand it and B: Who really cares? (Personally, I think Douglas Adams just got lucky in meeting the criterion for hard sci-fi; math and tech don't much figure into the stories.)
So, having thoroughly explained and ruined the joke, that's where my post came from. You seem earnest and honest, so I'll give you a similar explanation.
They have repeatedly claimed, with varying levels of directness, that the reason they must ban people from using Open Source and the reason that Open Source is evil is that the use their customers make of Open Source (GPL'ed) software is that it will obligate Microsoft to do something. Yes, the claim has been made, with varying levels of directness.
Slashdot covered this, but unfortunately, I can't find the reference; one side effect of letting people comment on articles is that nearly every article matches a given search term. In particular there was one article about some SDK (for embedded devices, I think) that contained in the licensing agreement the provision that no software which might obligate Microsoft to release their code could be compiled with the SDK.
The point is, the claim that such software exists, clearly directed at the GPL, and clearly successful to some extent in that I've had to deal with people who believe this 'contamination' happens, is false. No such software exists. You'll never hear them point to a piece of software and finger it as a problem; they can't claim this totally directly. But it's perfectly clear cut what they are trying to imply, because they are getting as close as they possibly can to claiming this. (And again... it's working on some people; they are convincing people that using GPL software will infect their own IP. You can be quite sure that's not an accident.)
Nothing a user of Microsoft software can do, developer or otherwise, can possibly obligate Microsoft in the slightest. It's impossible. As impossible as trying to come up with a scenario where I somehow create a legal obligation for you based on the posting you just created.
I can make a derivative work with your posting and try to Open Content it, but all the means is that I had no right to Open Content your post in the first place. Nothing I do can aquire those rights by fiat. Nothing I do can obligate you without your consent.
This line from Microsoft angers me, because it goes beyond FUD, beyond number juggling, beyond threats, beyond monopolistic manipulation. It's not FUD, it's another three-letter word you may be familiar with: L I E . It's a flat-out lie. And they know it.
After those modifications, I'm afraid the previously-finite odds will be 2 to the power of Infinity minus one, an irrational number which only has application in Improbability Physics.
Oops, wrong sci-fi series. We'll be restoring normalacy just as soon we are sure what is normal anyhow. Thank you!
A pause in the mad rush for speed might give some time to think of what to *do* with all that power.
You suffer from the fallacious idea that all anybody does is pursue better processors. A simple look around you will reveal that "the industry" as a whole dedicates some small percentage (probably less then 10% measured by cash) of its efforts in this direction. The rest of are... thinking what to "do" with all that power.
Re-assigning processor engineers to figure out what to "do" with that power would be a waste anyways. They design processors, they don't write window managers.
Really, just look around; this is a rather simple to debunk with just your eyes, unless you live in a fabrication facility... sheesh!
You may find it sickening, but
- It's the way the law works! It's not like the original poster was making it up, that's how the DMCA covers this exact situation. Look it up for yourself.
- How else do you expect it to work? Emphasis on work, not expect like you might read it at first. Ethically, it's just not my problem to figure out whether your works are being infringed, and practically, it's impossible for any non-trivial service to decide whether a given piece of content is copyrighted. Are you going to look at each and every comment posted on Slashdot, determine whether its copyrighted by someone other then the poster, further determine whether the poster has permission to post it to Slashdot (which they may!), and then take corrective action? Do you want that job? Does anybody?
It's just not practical to expect any service that allows content posting to check everything, if for no other reason then you have to check for permission, in addition to copyright status! That's why the DMCA distributes the responsibility back to the copyright holders. It can't work any other way. Like I said, you may find it sickening, but not only is it the way it works, it's the only way it can work. (And remember... Napster never posted a copyrighted song on their service. Place the blame where it belongs, with the violators.)