You claim that though your words were written fast They still have merit; I must disagree A limerick is specific; if you passed On proper forms, a limerick it won't be.
As for your plea that limericks shouldn't sum: Again, I say the error lies with you. A headline needn't be in headline form Encapsulation's all it needs to do.
I'll say quite freely that your noble task To give us poetry in troubled times Is tricky and most selfless (if you ask I too am guilty of egregious rhymes)
If cavilling upsets you, do not rage; My reasons are lined out upon my page
you don't complain about society because someone did something the programmer(s) didn't expect.
This looks like it could turn into one of those really annoying semantic arguments. But what the hell.
I don't consider flaws in mathematical models to be bugs; models, after all, simulate reality; this is something they can never do perfectly. Therefore all models are flawed. Are they all buggy? I'd contend that they aren't. Any model is continually in a state of refinement. When something that never occured to you actually happens, you include it. Until that unanticipated phenomenon happens, it's unreasonable to expect its inclusion. You could maintain that the model was buggy because it didn't predict the swaying. I don't think that this is the case, however; the model was complete as far as the state of the art at the time was concerned. That state of the art has since moved on; any models that now fail to take the new phenomenon into account may be described as buggy, but I still prefer 'incomplete'.
I'd take issue with the inclusion of the London Millennium Bridge; that wasn't so much a failure of software, but a flawed model, that failed to take into account the effects of swaying pedestrians. After it was rectified, there were new data - never used in any bridge model - incorporated into such models so that it won't happen again. That's science; not a bug.
I've wanted a book like this for a while; I'm off to fatbr- er, Barnes and Noble. But before I go, I'll suggest to one and all Mendeleyev's Dream by Paul Strathern. I somehow got the impression from the online blurb that it was similar to this book; a history - and breakdown - of the PTE. It's not; however, it's a fascinating read on the history of chemistry, even for those of us who know little of the subject.
I'm getting really sick of people telling me how good Evangelion is. So sick, in fact, that I may have to give it another go. Normally anything gainacky is going to be great, but I watch the first few episodes immediately after watching all of Giant Robo, which (for the first few episdoes of Evangelion, at least) has exactly the same plot. Which meant I gave up after (I think) for episodes.
So, before I relent and get the first few DVDs: it does get better, doesn't it?
There's no pleasing some people. Let's examine your three criteria for impressiveness...
Protein. Yeah, that'd be cool. But a protein is a string of amino acids. Chances are if you've got zillions of the buggers zipping around inside a gas cloud billions of kilometres across, then proteins are probably above our heads as we speak. Sadly, I don't think the Ames research facility has that much space, nor the millions of years needed to simulate how it'd actually happen.
Cell . They've made buckyballs, which are cells for helium atoms. That do?
Living cell. Just be clear: you won't be impressed by any intermediate steps; you'll just sit up and take notice when they've created life? What then? You won't be amazed until they teach it to play the piano?
WRT 'create': I noticed. I didn't care. I never assumed that it meant that they'd made their acids from zero-point energy; I doubt anyone else did either.
I recall reading about a bible shop that kept having their KJVs nicked until they put up a sign saying "Thou Shalt not Steal." I guess that explains all the people fornicating on the floor.
I'd agree with your contention that a DVD would be a welcome addition; last year some time I saw a documentary on robotic cockroaches - probably the self-same bugs referenced herein - and I was astonished by how such apparently complex behaviour could be achieved with so few rules. You've got to see them scurrying to believe them.
As for the 'non-scaling' criticism: to quote Dogbert, 'Pah!' They do what they're supposed to do. I never criticised my Spectrum because it didn't have dolby sound; I wouldn't criticise my roaches because they don't write operas.
First of all, 2020 is, I think, an hopelessly optimistic date. The factory you're talking about would never be manned, and never be repaired. Seeing as you're doing this for the cash, you've got to design a system that won't need repair in a long time; the cost of a repair mission - automated or manned - would offset pretty much any chance of profit for a long time.
Then, of course, there's the problem with getting there, finding a suitable asteroid, avoiding collisions while parking, finding the right stuff to process, getting the processed materials back to Earth... the list goes ever on.
It's a good idea. But a lot of work needs to be done before; not just in terms of technology, but having that technology work for proctracted periods in hostile environments. What's needed is somewhere remote, but still within monkeywrenching distance if things do go wrong. And things will go wrong; what you're suggesting would be innovative in almost every respect.
So: where could we have a base that's remote, manned by the sort of people who'd need to work at maintaining these things, who would as part of their work be testing technology and processes that would be vital to a further understanding of what's necessary for an asteroid mining factory?
Final point: a Mars mission as outlined by Zubrin (and, increasingly, favoured by NASA) is to send a crew there for six months. That's no two-week propaganda mission.
Generally, the time stamp that's constantly on the screen contains a five-letter code; I've often wondered whether this was unique, uncommon or on every copy. But as I never intended copying them, I was never sufficiently arsed about finding out.
I used to get quite a few of these on video, and they were always indivdually coded, so that they could be identified in the event of duplication. They also had a monstrously annoying tendency to put a big "this is a sampler" message all over the screen every fifteen minutes.
Course, if you're getting to see the movie/tv series/whatever months ahead of everyone else, you tend not to complain too much.
I've never heard an immigrant - to Ireland or England - refer to themselves as (Irish|English)/$ETHNICITY. I know people who are Pakistani, and who are Indian, and even who are English. But my British-born colleages don't refer to themselves as English-Irishmen, my Hindi chums don't call themselves Indian-Irish, etc etc.
I'm not saying that people don't describe themselves according to ethnicity/origin/whatever; I'm stating that it isn't the artform it is in the US. Try describing yourself as one-sixteenth Tamil in any accent other than American, and watch people laugh.
Therefore, if you were born on Mars, you could call yourself an "American Martian" or "Chinese Martian", depending on your originating country in the Martian Union. In much the same way that a German could call themselves a German European. A German would call himself a German. A gentleman of Chinese extraction born on Mars would probably call himself a Martian. It's only americans that are obsessed with this ridiculous labelling. Only an American (or, to use the latest appalling neologism, "USian") would say something along the lines of "I'm one quarter Chinese, one quarter Navajo and half Scottish" and do so with a straight face.
Sorry for sneering, but I've never known whether I should be irritated or amused by this ludicrous tendency. So I just sneer.
Slashdot Mirror
Why don't polar bears eat penguins?
- Polar bears don't come from next door, they come from the antarctic.
- They can't get the tins open
and a brand new option...
They can't get through the shell.
Boom boom!
You claim that though your words were written fast
They still have merit; I must disagree
A limerick is specific; if you passed
On proper forms, a limerick it won't be.
As for your plea that limericks shouldn't sum:
Again, I say the error lies with you.
A headline needn't be in headline form
Encapsulation's all it needs to do.
I'll say quite freely that your noble task
To give us poetry in troubled times
Is tricky and most selfless (if you ask
I too am guilty of egregious rhymes)
If cavilling upsets you, do not rage;
My reasons are lined out upon my page
dunno. Did meept write limericks that didn't scan, too?
No better way to get rid of a bunch of ageing zep fans. Now, if only you'd sway to the theme song to Friends, I'd be truly happy.
Disclaimer: I, to am a zep fan. I really am. But I've always considered whipping out lighters during a gig to be a hanging offence.
you don't complain about society because someone did something the programmer(s) didn't expect.
This looks like it could turn into one of those really annoying semantic arguments. But what the hell.
I don't consider flaws in mathematical models to be bugs; models, after all, simulate reality; this is something they can never do perfectly. Therefore all models are flawed. Are they all buggy? I'd contend that they aren't. Any model is continually in a state of refinement. When something that never occured to you actually happens, you include it. Until that unanticipated phenomenon happens, it's unreasonable to expect its inclusion.
You could maintain that the model was buggy because it didn't predict the swaying. I don't think that this is the case, however; the model was complete as far as the state of the art at the time was concerned. That state of the art has since moved on; any models that now fail to take the new phenomenon into account may be described as buggy, but I still prefer 'incomplete'.
I'd take issue with the inclusion of the London Millennium Bridge; that wasn't so much a failure of software, but a flawed model, that failed to take into account the effects of swaying pedestrians. After it was rectified, there were new data - never used in any bridge model - incorporated into such models so that it won't happen again. That's science; not a bug.
I've wanted a book like this for a while; I'm off to fatbr- er, Barnes and Noble.
But before I go, I'll suggest to one and all Mendeleyev's Dream by Paul Strathern. I somehow got the impression from the online blurb that it was similar to this book; a history - and breakdown - of the PTE. It's not; however, it's a fascinating read on the history of chemistry, even for those of us who know little of the subject.
You presume the car was locked? What kind of wussy criminals do you have in the US, anyway?
I'm getting really sick of people telling me how good Evangelion is. So sick, in fact, that I may have to give it another go. Normally anything gainacky is going to be great, but I watch the first few episodes immediately after watching all of Giant Robo, which (for the first few episdoes of Evangelion, at least) has exactly the same plot. Which meant I gave up after (I think) for episodes.
So, before I relent and get the first few DVDs: it does get better, doesn't it?
I predict that it your screensaver is Life, you'll get no work done.
Did you know about it? I didn't. So to me it was new.
I believe that's alludium, but I can't be sure. It's also used in the Alludium q-36 explosive space modulator.
1. Only nerds watch science fiction
2. Farscape is science fiction
3. Nerds don't have lives
=> Nerds are going to be in on Friday nights.
Don't complain just because you're better off than the rest of us.
Protein. Yeah, that'd be cool. But a protein is a string of amino acids. Chances are if you've got zillions of the buggers zipping around inside a gas cloud billions of kilometres across, then proteins are probably above our heads as we speak. Sadly, I don't think the Ames research facility has that much space, nor the millions of years needed to simulate how it'd actually happen.
Cell . They've made buckyballs, which are cells for helium atoms. That do?
Living cell. Just be clear: you won't be impressed by any intermediate steps; you'll just sit up and take notice when they've created life? What then? You won't be amazed until they teach it to play the piano?
WRT 'create': I noticed. I didn't care. I never assumed that it meant that they'd made their acids from zero-point energy; I doubt anyone else did either.
XP killer, eh? Just because it's a superior product? Well, if anything'll work against microsoft, that'd be it.
Knife goes in! Guts come out! That's what Osaka Seafood Concern is all about!
I recall reading about a bible shop that kept having their KJVs nicked until they put up a sign saying "Thou Shalt not Steal." I guess that explains all the people fornicating on the floor.
I'd agree with your contention that a DVD would be a welcome addition; last year some time I saw a documentary on robotic cockroaches - probably the self-same bugs referenced herein - and I was astonished by how such apparently complex behaviour could be achieved with so few rules. You've got to see them scurrying to believe them.
As for the 'non-scaling' criticism: to quote Dogbert, 'Pah!' They do what they're supposed to do. I never criticised my Spectrum because it didn't have dolby sound; I wouldn't criticise my roaches because they don't write operas.
First of all, 2020 is, I think, an hopelessly optimistic date. The factory you're talking about would never be manned, and never be repaired. Seeing as you're doing this for the cash, you've got to design a system that won't need repair in a long time; the cost of a repair mission - automated or manned - would offset pretty much any chance of profit for a long time.
Then, of course, there's the problem with getting there, finding a suitable asteroid, avoiding collisions while parking, finding the right stuff to process, getting the processed materials back to Earth... the list goes ever on.
It's a good idea. But a lot of work needs to be done before; not just in terms of technology, but having that technology work for proctracted periods in hostile environments. What's needed is somewhere remote, but still within monkeywrenching distance if things do go wrong. And things will go wrong; what you're suggesting would be innovative in almost every respect.
So: where could we have a base that's remote, manned by the sort of people who'd need to work at maintaining these things, who would as part of their work be testing technology and processes that would be vital to a further understanding of what's necessary for an asteroid mining factory?
Final point: a Mars mission as outlined by Zubrin (and, increasingly, favoured by NASA) is to send a crew there for six months. That's no two-week propaganda mission.
Generally, the time stamp that's constantly on the screen contains a five-letter code; I've often wondered whether this was unique, uncommon or on every copy. But as I never intended copying them, I was never sufficiently arsed about finding out.
I used to get quite a few of these on video, and they were always indivdually coded, so that they could be identified in the event of duplication. They also had a monstrously annoying tendency to put a big "this is a sampler" message all over the screen every fifteen minutes.
Course, if you're getting to see the movie/tv series/whatever months ahead of everyone else, you tend not to complain too much.
Oh, and sorry about turning any readers into a newt, this morning, I'm still working on that one.
That's okay. I got better.
does that mean that I have mutated in a musick playing monster?
Only if you play the accordion.
I've never heard an immigrant - to Ireland or England - refer to themselves as (Irish|English)/$ETHNICITY. I know people who are Pakistani, and who are Indian, and even who are English. But my British-born colleages don't refer to themselves as English-Irishmen, my Hindi chums don't call themselves Indian-Irish, etc etc.
I'm not saying that people don't describe themselves according to ethnicity/origin/whatever; I'm stating that it isn't the artform it is in the US. Try describing yourself as one-sixteenth Tamil in any accent other than American, and watch people laugh.
Therefore, if you were born on Mars, you could call yourself an "American Martian" or "Chinese Martian", depending on your originating country in the Martian Union. In much the same way that a German could call themselves a German European.
A German would call himself a German. A gentleman of Chinese extraction born on Mars would probably call himself a Martian.
It's only americans that are obsessed with this ridiculous labelling.
Only an American (or, to use the latest appalling neologism, "USian") would say something along the lines of "I'm one quarter Chinese, one quarter Navajo and half Scottish" and do so with a straight face.
Sorry for sneering, but I've never known whether I should be irritated or amused by this ludicrous tendency. So I just sneer.