Your first problem is that you believe that there actually was a cold war.
Tell it, brother! And that "holocaust" never happened, either! And together, we'll expose that pack of lies that these so-called "world wars" happened, as well!
ATI runs their mouth about some specs for new macs before Macworld. Apple removes ATI boards from their computers and refuses to offer them as a build-to-order.
Which really underscores the stupidity of Steve's arrogance. I'm sure ATI wanted that contract, it was a nice contract, but Apple is NOTHING in the great scheme of the PC market. And there aren't that many major players in the high-end graphic chip game. Why play the prima donna, when he might have to deal with them in the future?
How do we get that focus back? Things don't look good to this casual observer - we're pouring a half trillion dollars and an open-ended commitment into this stupid war to preserve a strategic hold on oil fields while NASA languishes and the country's imagination stagnates.
You're making the common mistake that NASA's focus comes from a lack of money. On the contrary, lack of money increases focus -- because it has to. NASA has an enormous amount of money by any reasonable standard. It's only when you compare to unreasonable standards (like the rest of the government) that it seems small.
That's what is sad - as a country, we've let our politicians and corporations pursue their own interests for so long and to such bounds that we are in danger of losing some of the few jewels we still have left in our crown.
NASA was a very expensive jewel in the crown 40 years ago. Do you know why it died? Not from lack of imagination or some ethereal mamby-pamby reason -- it's because there was no profit in space, and no easy way to make it. Remember, Columbus didn't sail for the love of adventure, he sailed because he wanted to open new trade routes. Prior to, say, the 1800s when the wealth of individuals gave them enough leisure money to do it, NO ONE sailed for pure exploration and knowledge. It was always about profit.
If you want space opened up, then quit whining about the eeeeevil corporations and starting hoping that the "new space corporations" will create space hotels and space trips, which will hopefully lower the cost, and we will see more routine space travel.
Try using Debian, Ubuntu, Knoppix, Mepis, hey any Debian-derived Linux, which has a package system and installer that properly handles dependencies.
That's great... unless you're running a version that's a couple of years old, and don't particularly want to do a "forced upgrade" of everything on your system. Most stuff in Windows will just drop on anything Win2K or later (if not Win/95...). Of course, there are exceptions (esp games), but as a general rule, things just drop on with minimum fuss.
Wait, something in Windows... gasp... doesnt work!?!
I know this was intended to just be a funny dig (if you define "bash microsoft" as "hysterically funny", of course), but I have a hell of a lot more success installing binary software in Windows that "just works" than Linux, which regularly suffers from Library Hell.
I checked out the link, which has a poor supposed copy of a page from the end of the book. The page has at least two glaring errors, that I won't point out, because I don't want the idiot who made it to fix them.
But if anyone reads this, don't worry. It's not legit.
You're assuming that alien life would want to cover the galaxy. Perhaps the sane choice of any evolved civilization is population control?
It only takes one civilization. They're ALL uninterested in expansion, across billions of years? Also, even if they want to do population control, that doesn't preclude sending out AI self-replicating probes. But where are they?
Perhaps we will be the first?
That's another way of saying we're alone in the galaxy.
Assuming that, on a Universal time-scale, life elsewhere started around the same time as life here, there's no way...
Er, why would you assume that? The earth is 4.5 billion years old. The galaxy is 13 billion years old. It take about 5 million years (give or take) to fill up a galaxy. Five million years is nothing in the scheme of things.
After all, we haven't managed a colony on our own moon yet, much less on other planets or planets in other solar systems.
We've gone from stone tablets to space travel in five thousand years. Five thousand! That's a tiny interval when we're talking about galactic time. The odds that two civilizations would develop technology at exactly the same rate and be at the same level at the same time is incredibly small.
Few people want to admit this, but I'm pretty much convinced that we're alone in the galaxy, primarily because of the Fermi Paradox. Specifically, the argument that it takes a "relatively" short time (on galactic scales) for a space-faring civilization to fill up a galaxy, even at sublight speeds, when you factor in geometric progression. If intelligent life was common, one would've filled up the galaxy by now and we wouldn't even exist.
On the other hand, we're aiming at what people will have 4 years from now, when we ship the product. Can we or can we not assume people will have 1TB of storage?
You can't use computer miniaturization to make predictions about any other engineering field, ESPECIALLY material science. The fact is, computer technology advancement is unprecidented in any other field. We can make reasonable predictions about computer technology four years from now because we've had a relatively predictable industry for the last 20 years. Nothing else is like that (heck, look at battery technology for an annoying example).
Unobtainium is nice. Only problem is, it was said about so many things to date (heavier-than-air flight, nanomechanics, small transistors, cheap IC's, dense storage, etc) that all it amounts to is a synonym for "I have nothing useful to contribute".
No reasonable person ever said heavier than air flight was impossible (that's a common misconception). All you have to do is look in the nearest tree for a lot of little machines that prove that it can be done. Anyway, what does that prove about anything? That's like using the foolish argument, "if we can put a man on the moon, why can't we [name your issue]." One doesn't have anything to do with the other. Doing one thing makes no prediction about anything else.
Maybe we'll have instant teleportation someday. Maybe we'll be able to exceed the speed of light. But "maybe" tells us absolutely nothing. By that standard, *everything* is "maybe". But some things have a much higher probability than others. You seem to think that everything has an equal probability -- it's only a "mere question of engineering".
"Never assume you can tell apart impossibility from your own lack of imagination. Always state the latter" (that's mine if you want to quote it).
*shrug* And just waving your hands and saying "nothing is impossible" doesn't really address anything. When someone says "impossible", typically they really mean "impractical", which is "impossible for all practical purposes". Sure, we could possibly create a machine that creates perfect nanoribbon, atom by atom by atom, but that doesn't address the practicality.
Just because we can imagine something doesn't mean that it will ever be practical. For example, I HIGHLY doubt that general-purpose nanoreplicators that can turn anything into anything else as described in science fiction will ever be practical (the "gray goo" scenerio is completely absurd).
Physical limitations can and will be engineered around in chemistry as well as in many other fields. That's what engineering is all about.
There is a very well-known engineering concept for this, commonly given as the solution to various engineering problems by experienced engineers to bright-eyed newly minted engineers.
After all, if your goal is to swim the English Channel, you might want to try swimming across a pool first.
Well, the analogy is more like if your goal is to swim the English Channel, then why not try swimming across a pool at the top of Mount Everest?:)
In other words, the actual designing of the moon elevator is much less of a problem than getting all the material to the moon, doing construction on the moon (dust!), and all the organizational infrastructure needed to do a project of that scope so far from the Earth.
When they do, file the appropriate DMCA response outlining why the material isn't infringing.
Except that it clearly is. You can create sheet music based on copyrighted material and publish it, either. Sheet music publishing rights and performance recording rights are separate animals, but both have clear copyright protection.
Even some anti-copyright people recognize that taking a book, making copies of it, and selling the copies is not really appropriate. This is exactly the same thing. Guitartabs.com is making money (via advertising) from other people's published work.
When you say "notice how slim the margin is" when comparing 62 gigapascals needed with the 100 gigapascals achievable, that seems to be a lot to me. 48 gigpascals is equivalent to 1,000,000 metric tons falling a metre, isn't it? Sounds like quite a lot.
It's not the amount that's important, it's the percentage. Put it this way... you're pulling a 620lb trailer with your car, which, say, has your kids in it. Would you be comfortable with using a 1,000 pound test rope to haul the trailer? After all, that's an extra 380lbs! Or do you think a few hard jerks could potentially snap the rope pretty easily?
Now, "hard jerks" wouldn't necessarily be a problem with a space elevator (but maybe winds COULD cause temporary increases in tension, I don't know), but you can see that safety margin isn't a bad thing.
I was pretty much convinced the space elevator was never going to happen with our current understanding of material technology anyway. There was a study in Nature a while back by Nicola Pugno who pointed out that defects in carbon nanoribbon would pretty much make it impossible. You need 62 gigapascals of tension strength for a space elevator. Carbon nanoribbon gives you 100 gigapascals. First, note how slim that margin is, and that's with PERFECT nanoribbon. But perfection is difficult to achieve in the real world, and inevitable atomic defects reduce the strength of the ribbon dramatically. Just a single atom defect in a single strand reduces strength by 30%. Bulk material consisting of many strands reduces that even further.
I can't find the original article, but here's a typical write-up at the time.
Who knows, maybe somebody will invent something better than carbon nanotubes, but even a perfect ribbon has a mighty slim margin.
First of all, this is who the RIAA donated to, not who "accepted" their money. I would say nearly all politicians will except money from anyone, except entities who are clearly negative to the mainstream (and the RIAA is NOT "clearly negative" to the mainstream).
One of the ways the RIAA operates is by donating money to politicians who then enact favorable legislation on their behalf. Don't let the optimist in you believe that this doesn't work. It does.
Second of all, these amounts are ridiculously small. Does anyone seriously thinking $1,000-$9,000 is going to buy major legislation? That won't pay for their gold letter opener on their desk. Sheesh, if that's all it takes to pass legislation, I'll pay a couple thou to get MY pet legislation passed.
In girls, the shorter the ring finger to index finger ratio, the better is their verbal skills.
Well, this obviously was written by a boy with an extremely long ring finger then.
As do you, apparently. The sentence is correct. "the better" is singular, hence the use of "is". The fact that the object is plural doesn't matter.
Which is correct: He is going to several stores. He are going to several stores. It's the subject that determines a singular or plural verb.
Now, I realize that "the better" is tricky to classify as singular or plural (and 'are' sounds more natural), but try this out: The money is going to several charities. The money are going to several charities. Money is a [xxxx] type of word that I can't think of at the moment, but it's not pluralized. Yet, we use a singular verb. (though, confusingly, we sometimes pluralize "monies" as several types of money, though we don't use a plural with amounts of money)
Grammar often being a pain the ass to get right, I'm willing to hear why I'm wrong about this.
Incidently, my 2nd and fourth fingers are the same length, AND I was very good at math, but I suck at verbal communications, though I am good at the written.:)
2500+ odd stories in 2 weeks certainly makes one wonder if some of the fanfictioners didn't get the memo that they were supposed to be ticked.
That doesn't totally suck, I guess, but it's worth nothing that fanfiction.net has almost 300,000 stories -- in the Harry Potter category alone (granted, that's over many years).
I wonder how much advertising money they spent for that 2,500.
So you point is what exactly ? That every good book has good literary value ?
So how do you define "literary" value? Is that simply a function of how complex the grammar is? Does Lord of the Rings, one of the most horrendously written classics ever created, qualify as having literary value? Wizard of Oz? Or heck, how about anything by Charles Dickens, who was immensely popular, but generally regarded as having no literary value in his time?
As far as I can tell, the difference between literature and non-literature is the date on the book. If it passes the test of time, then it's considered classic literature.
I don't know about anybody else, but there's no doubt in my mind that 100 years from now, HP will still be around as classic literature.
he is selling signed copies of Harry Potter (literary garbage, even if it has entertaining values).
That's what the "cognoscenti" said about Huckleberry Finn, Lord of the Rings, Wizard of Oz, and [name your classic children's book]. The Harry Potter is destined to become a classic. They might not please the intellectual elite, but their incredible depth and breadth of plot along with its self-consistent world is an amazing achievement. And if you think they're shallow, as many do, then I respectfully submit that you need to ead them again with a more careful eye. The most amazing thing about these books is that a seven year old can read them for just the surface adventure, but an adult reader can read them for the extremely subtle plot questions (see the various fan sites for innumerable essays on the open questions).
Slashdot Mirror
Your first problem is that you believe that there actually was a cold war.
Tell it, brother! And that "holocaust" never happened, either! And together, we'll expose that pack of lies that these so-called "world wars" happened, as well!
So my question is, why isn't anyone doing something about your mom in laws behavior?
That's like asking, "why don't they take the bottle out of the alcoholic's hands?"
It's not that simple when you're dealing with an adult making their choices.
Where's your ethical cutoff point? Why?
I eat what's appealing, same as every other animal. Do I need another reason?
Frankly, I'm very comfortable with my place in the food chain. Nature is... natural.
ATI runs their mouth about some specs for new macs before Macworld. Apple removes ATI boards from their computers and refuses to offer them as a build-to-order.
Which really underscores the stupidity of Steve's arrogance. I'm sure ATI wanted that contract, it was a nice contract, but Apple is NOTHING in the great scheme of the PC market. And there aren't that many major players in the high-end graphic chip game. Why play the prima donna, when he might have to deal with them in the future?
How do we get that focus back? Things don't look good to this casual observer - we're pouring a half trillion dollars and an open-ended commitment into this stupid war to preserve a strategic hold on oil fields while NASA languishes and the country's imagination stagnates.
You're making the common mistake that NASA's focus comes from a lack of money. On the contrary, lack of money increases focus -- because it has to. NASA has an enormous amount of money by any reasonable standard. It's only when you compare to unreasonable standards (like the rest of the government) that it seems small.
That's what is sad - as a country, we've let our politicians and corporations pursue their own interests for so long and to such bounds that we are in danger of losing some of the few jewels we still have left in our crown.
NASA was a very expensive jewel in the crown 40 years ago. Do you know why it died? Not from lack of imagination or some ethereal mamby-pamby reason -- it's because there was no profit in space, and no easy way to make it. Remember, Columbus didn't sail for the love of adventure, he sailed because he wanted to open new trade routes. Prior to, say, the 1800s when the wealth of individuals gave them enough leisure money to do it, NO ONE sailed for pure exploration and knowledge. It was always about profit.
If you want space opened up, then quit whining about the eeeeevil corporations and starting hoping that the "new space corporations" will create space hotels and space trips, which will hopefully lower the cost, and we will see more routine space travel.
Try using Debian, Ubuntu, Knoppix, Mepis, hey any Debian-derived Linux, which has a package system and installer that properly handles dependencies.
That's great... unless you're running a version that's a couple of years old, and don't particularly want to do a "forced upgrade" of everything on your system. Most stuff in Windows will just drop on anything Win2K or later (if not Win/95...). Of course, there are exceptions (esp games), but as a general rule, things just drop on with minimum fuss.
Wait, something in Windows ... gasp ... doesnt work!?!
I know this was intended to just be a funny dig (if you define "bash microsoft" as "hysterically funny", of course), but I have a hell of a lot more success installing binary software in Windows that "just works" than Linux, which regularly suffers from Library Hell.
I checked out the link, which has a poor supposed copy of a page from the end of the book. The page has at least two glaring errors, that I won't point out, because I don't want the idiot who made it to fix them.
But if anyone reads this, don't worry. It's not legit.
You're assuming that alien life would want to cover the galaxy. Perhaps the sane choice of any evolved civilization is population control?
It only takes one civilization. They're ALL uninterested in expansion, across billions of years? Also, even if they want to do population control, that doesn't preclude sending out AI self-replicating probes. But where are they?
Perhaps we will be the first?
That's another way of saying we're alone in the galaxy.
I have no idea what you're talking about (maybe the joke is flying over my head?), but the pyramids were built 4,000 years ago.
Assuming that, on a Universal time-scale, life elsewhere started around the same time as life here, there's no way...
Er, why would you assume that? The earth is 4.5 billion years old. The galaxy is 13 billion years old. It take about 5 million years (give or take) to fill up a galaxy. Five million years is nothing in the scheme of things.
After all, we haven't managed a colony on our own moon yet, much less on other planets or planets in other solar systems.
We've gone from stone tablets to space travel in five thousand years. Five thousand! That's a tiny interval when we're talking about galactic time. The odds that two civilizations would develop technology at exactly the same rate and be at the same level at the same time is incredibly small.
Few people want to admit this, but I'm pretty much convinced that we're alone in the galaxy, primarily because of the Fermi Paradox. Specifically, the argument that it takes a "relatively" short time (on galactic scales) for a space-faring civilization to fill up a galaxy, even at sublight speeds, when you factor in geometric progression. If intelligent life was common, one would've filled up the galaxy by now and we wouldn't even exist.
In the mean time, poor little Johnny is in trouble for listening to the radio and playing a song by ear.
Um, no, he isn't. At least understand the issues before writing these silly rants.
Hint: It's not about memorizing, it's about republishing.
On the other hand, we're aiming at what people will have 4 years from now, when we ship the product. Can we or can we not assume people will have 1TB of storage?
You can't use computer miniaturization to make predictions about any other engineering field, ESPECIALLY material science. The fact is, computer technology advancement is unprecidented in any other field. We can make reasonable predictions about computer technology four years from now because we've had a relatively predictable industry for the last 20 years. Nothing else is like that (heck, look at battery technology for an annoying example).
Unobtainium is nice. Only problem is, it was said about so many things to date (heavier-than-air flight, nanomechanics, small transistors, cheap IC's, dense storage, etc) that all it amounts to is a synonym for "I have nothing useful to contribute".
No reasonable person ever said heavier than air flight was impossible (that's a common misconception). All you have to do is look in the nearest tree for a lot of little machines that prove that it can be done. Anyway, what does that prove about anything? That's like using the foolish argument, "if we can put a man on the moon, why can't we [name your issue]." One doesn't have anything to do with the other. Doing one thing makes no prediction about anything else.
Maybe we'll have instant teleportation someday. Maybe we'll be able to exceed the speed of light. But "maybe" tells us absolutely nothing. By that standard, *everything* is "maybe". But some things have a much higher probability than others. You seem to think that everything has an equal probability -- it's only a "mere question of engineering".
"Never assume you can tell apart impossibility from your own lack of imagination. Always state the latter" (that's mine if you want to quote it).
*shrug* And just waving your hands and saying "nothing is impossible" doesn't really address anything. When someone says "impossible", typically they really mean "impractical", which is "impossible for all practical purposes". Sure, we could possibly create a machine that creates perfect nanoribbon, atom by atom by atom, but that doesn't address the practicality.
Just because we can imagine something doesn't mean that it will ever be practical. For example, I HIGHLY doubt that general-purpose nanoreplicators that can turn anything into anything else as described in science fiction will ever be practical (the "gray goo" scenerio is completely absurd).
Physical limitations can and will be engineered around in chemistry as well as in many other fields. That's what engineering is all about.
There is a very well-known engineering concept for this, commonly given as the solution to various engineering problems by experienced engineers to bright-eyed newly minted engineers.
After all, if your goal is to swim the English Channel, you might want to try swimming across a pool first.
Well, the analogy is more like if your goal is to swim the English Channel, then why not try swimming across a pool at the top of Mount Everest? :)
In other words, the actual designing of the moon elevator is much less of a problem than getting all the material to the moon, doing construction on the moon (dust!), and all the organizational infrastructure needed to do a project of that scope so far from the Earth.
Damn, I meant 'You can't create sheet music based on copyrighted material...'
When they do, file the appropriate DMCA response outlining why the material isn't infringing.
Except that it clearly is. You can create sheet music based on copyrighted material and publish it, either. Sheet music publishing rights and performance recording rights are separate animals, but both have clear copyright protection.
Even some anti-copyright people recognize that taking a book, making copies of it, and selling the copies is not really appropriate. This is exactly the same thing. Guitartabs.com is making money (via advertising) from other people's published work.
When you say "notice how slim the margin is" when comparing 62 gigapascals needed with the 100 gigapascals achievable, that seems to be a lot to me. 48 gigpascals is equivalent to 1,000,000 metric tons falling a metre, isn't it? Sounds like quite a lot.
It's not the amount that's important, it's the percentage. Put it this way... you're pulling a 620lb trailer with your car, which, say, has your kids in it. Would you be comfortable with using a 1,000 pound test rope to haul the trailer? After all, that's an extra 380lbs! Or do you think a few hard jerks could potentially snap the rope pretty easily?
Now, "hard jerks" wouldn't necessarily be a problem with a space elevator (but maybe winds COULD cause temporary increases in tension, I don't know), but you can see that safety margin isn't a bad thing.
I was pretty much convinced the space elevator was never going to happen with our current understanding of material technology anyway. There was a study in Nature a while back by Nicola Pugno who pointed out that defects in carbon nanoribbon would pretty much make it impossible. You need 62 gigapascals of tension strength for a space elevator. Carbon nanoribbon gives you 100 gigapascals. First, note how slim that margin is, and that's with PERFECT nanoribbon. But perfection is difficult to achieve in the real world, and inevitable atomic defects reduce the strength of the ribbon dramatically. Just a single atom defect in a single strand reduces strength by 30%. Bulk material consisting of many strands reduces that even further.
I can't find the original article, but here's a typical write-up at the time.
Who knows, maybe somebody will invent something better than carbon nanotubes, but even a perfect ribbon has a mighty slim margin.
First of all, this is who the RIAA donated to, not who "accepted" their money. I would say nearly all politicians will except money from anyone, except entities who are clearly negative to the mainstream (and the RIAA is NOT "clearly negative" to the mainstream).
One of the ways the RIAA operates is by donating money to politicians who then enact favorable legislation on their behalf. Don't let the optimist in you believe that this doesn't work. It does.
Second of all, these amounts are ridiculously small. Does anyone seriously thinking $1,000-$9,000 is going to buy major legislation? That won't pay for their gold letter opener on their desk. Sheesh, if that's all it takes to pass legislation, I'll pay a couple thou to get MY pet legislation passed.
In short, what's the story here?
In girls, the shorter the ring finger to index finger ratio, the better is their verbal skills.
Well, this obviously was written by a boy with an extremely long ring finger then.
As do you, apparently. The sentence is correct. "the better" is singular, hence the use of "is". The fact that the object is plural doesn't matter.
Which is correct: He is going to several stores. He are going to several stores. It's the subject that determines a singular or plural verb.
Now, I realize that "the better" is tricky to classify as singular or plural (and 'are' sounds more natural), but try this out: The money is going to several charities. The money are going to several charities. Money is a [xxxx] type of word that I can't think of at the moment, but it's not pluralized. Yet, we use a singular verb. (though, confusingly, we sometimes pluralize "monies" as several types of money, though we don't use a plural with amounts of money)
Grammar often being a pain the ass to get right, I'm willing to hear why I'm wrong about this.
Incidently, my 2nd and fourth fingers are the same length, AND I was very good at math, but I suck at verbal communications, though I am good at the written. :)
2500+ odd stories in 2 weeks certainly makes one wonder if some of the fanfictioners didn't get the memo that they were supposed to be ticked.
That doesn't totally suck, I guess, but it's worth nothing that fanfiction.net has almost 300,000 stories -- in the Harry Potter category alone (granted, that's over many years).
I wonder how much advertising money they spent for that 2,500.
So you point is what exactly ? That every good book has good literary value ?
So how do you define "literary" value? Is that simply a function of how complex the grammar is? Does Lord of the Rings, one of the most horrendously written classics ever created, qualify as having literary value? Wizard of Oz? Or heck, how about anything by Charles Dickens, who was immensely popular, but generally regarded as having no literary value in his time?
As far as I can tell, the difference between literature and non-literature is the date on the book. If it passes the test of time, then it's considered classic literature.
I don't know about anybody else, but there's no doubt in my mind that 100 years from now, HP will still be around as classic literature.
he is selling signed copies of Harry Potter (literary garbage, even if it has entertaining values).
That's what the "cognoscenti" said about Huckleberry Finn, Lord of the Rings, Wizard of Oz, and [name your classic children's book]. The Harry Potter is destined to become a classic. They might not please the intellectual elite, but their incredible depth and breadth of plot along with its self-consistent world is an amazing achievement. And if you think they're shallow, as many do, then I respectfully submit that you need to ead them again with a more careful eye. The most amazing thing about these books is that a seven year old can read them for just the surface adventure, but an adult reader can read them for the extremely subtle plot questions (see the various fan sites for innumerable essays on the open questions).