I recently spent a full week, over 40 billable hours, getting redhat 7 on my previously redhat 6.1+updates+glibc-2.1 machine. I have never had problems of this magnitude before (especially XFree and kernel modules), and I have been using and upgrading your product since redhat 4.2. (which means that i went throught the whole libc5->libc6 thing.
I now understand from most people whom I have related my horror stories to, that the prevailing attitude is, "Don't upgrade from 6.x to 7.0; wipe and do a fresh install."
That would have been unacceptable given my investment in setting up the machine over the past few years. Did RH recognize this problem with the upgrade path? If so, why wasn't a warning given?
Bingo Foo
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Re:Ha! Metric unit of mass is still a chunk of met
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Uncle Sam's Funhouse
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· Score: 1
Um, angular measurement?
Um, radians?
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Link this, ivory tower elitist...
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Republic.Com
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Sunstein should have included the Federalist papers and other U.S. founding documents in an appendix as a paper version of his "links to sites with opposing viewpoints."
introducing "another existing thing" doesn't serve as an explanation of anything, it merely shifts the regression. ...to something outside the universe. That is the point. Nope. You added the "to something outside the universe". That's the fallacy.
Where else could it shift the regression?
...To the contrary, field equations are the laws of physics.
Come on, I'm a physicist, and I stopped falling for that line as an undergrad. They are the laws of physics? They are imperfect models that match observations better than any other models we have yet found. Pardon the stereotyping, but you seem to have a case of high-energy hubris.
if you're going to say that things can exist without being created, then you don't need any of the gods.
But the physical universe does have a definite origin. Invoking a God, which I agree can appear logically shady, is not the same thing as invoking a universe that exists without creation, since a God having the property of self-existence does not acquire its being, but the universe, by observational evidence, did acquire its being.
introducing "another existing thing" doesn't serve as an explanation of anything, it merely shifts the regression.
...to something outside the universe. That is the point.
And I still disagree with your assertion that you can write down a completely consistent set of physical laws. "Any field equation" is a model of limited scope, not a comprehensive system of laws for a universe. Certainly you know that the vacuum energy predicted by "any field equation" is already inconsistent with our observable universe? Yet it is useful as a predictive model within its limited scope. Just don't overestimate its validity.
And I wasn't confusing the issue by invoking Godel's theorem. I was demonstrating that you can't explore all of the logical implications of your system if you assume it is consistent, and by the Theorem, if you did explore all of the implications (completeness), it would be inconsistent.
How exactly is that an explanation? Because the next logical question is, What created God?
Uhhh... Ok, if that were the next logical question, the answer might be God(2), and God(3), and so on. You can either ask this forever, or terminate it at some point with "God(N) exists independent of cause." Having done that, God(1) through God(N-1) become moot, and your "+2 Insightful" question is revealed as the typical, tired, pseudophilosophic gibe of the proud, "educated" village atheist.
Some might suspect that the laws of physics are the only laws of physics that can be logically consistent,
There are plenty of laws of physics that are logically consistent, the real question is whether there's a unique set of them that agree with known observations. Right now that answer is "no", but may change with future observations.
No, I meant what I said. For the universe to exist without a cause, it must be a logical necessity, independent of circumstance or accident. And in fact, you can't claim irrefutibly that there are other sets of laws of physics that are logically consistent. I meant really logically consistent. You just can't work out all of the consequences of another proposed set of physical laws.
Example: What if there were N dimensions? Seems OK, and you get some gee-whiz insights based on taking our current universe and replacing the number of dimensions (11, I believe is the string theory number) with something else. Work out the implications further, and you realize that more needs to be changed. "Hmmm... Can't be a gravitational force in this universe...." Keep working out the implications, and you might find: "Hmmm... can't be conservation principles in this universe...." Go further, and who knows: "Hmmm... P and ~P in this universe." Eventually you might see the whole thing crumble to an honest to goodness logical contradiction. You would be playing reductio ad absurdum on an unparalleled scale.
Godel's theorem ups the ante. If the set of laws you propose are sufficiently complex (at least as complex as ordinary arithmetic) then you can never know all of the logical implications of that system.
The point is that either:
This is the only possible universe, in which case it has no necessity for an external cause, and in fact, no argument can be made for anything external to the physical universe.
This is one of many possible universes, which not only brings up the question of why we find ourselves in this particular universe (the anthropic principle handles this one without invoking God), but the more important fact that as a non-logical ncessity, the universe is predicated by another existing thing.
Saying "god did it" is a pretty poor way to explain away the complexity of the world. In order for god to have created a complex object, such as the infant universe, god would have to be pretty darn complex himself -- so all you've really done is replace one unexplainable complexity with another one that you like better.
Until physics can show, as some have said, "whether God had a choice in the creation of the universe," this is an open question. Unless the existence of the universe in its present form, with all the particle masses and coupling constants as they are, is shown to be an immutable logical necessity, there is reason to believe that there was a selection process of some sort in the creation of the universe, and this implies a preexisting cause. (preexisting here meaning in a logical sense. You can't preexist the universe chronologically; time is only defined within the universe.)
We know that the universe had a singular beginning, at a finite time in the past. Some might suspect that the laws of physics are the only laws of physics that can be logically consistent, but there is no reason to beleive that at this point.
For this reason, I believe that there is a logical necessity for something else as a logical cause of the universe, and I now have a choice: an infinite regression of causes for that cause or a terminating sequence with the primary cause being the functional equivalent of "God."
Yes, free speech is important, and it even allows you to spread your ignorant views.
For every nutcase redneck who promotes white power, there's a rainbow coalition website who would have been edged out by our republican, white congress, some of whom were in office and voted against civil-rights legislation in the 60's.
I had to laugh at this. It's so wrong in so many ways.
I'm not going to defend white power rednecks, but sheesh, the rainbow coalition? It may have started out with good intentions, but most people presented with the facts about how it operates today would recognize it as an extortion racket.
edged out by our republican congress? Where the fuck have you been? Congress has been Republican for six measly years, and the majority of those who voted against the civil rights bill in '64 were Democrats, fuckwad.
A lot of new VCRs will automatically set the clock from an embedded time code in broadcast TV. My VCR (a $60 model that I bought two months ago) says in the instructions to turn the channel to PBS and wait a few minutes for the time code to be broadcast. Then voila! your clock is set.
Anyone notice how any right whatsoever can be taken away in the name of "the children".
Anyone notice how the ACLU won't attack the media industry on behalf of our civil liberties of "fair use," but they rush in to silence religious speech and ensure that everyone has free access to porn?
Does anyone over there consider priorities?
All of this is typical/. fodder, but if you asked the average (American) citizen (not ACLU member) which is the bigger issue:
The taking away of your right to really "own" media
The fact that when public libraries use filtering software, adults will have to go ask at the front desk to get an unfiltered connection
Podunkville, USA allows the local Knights of Columbus to put a nativity scene in the park by the police station
Remember that console mfgrs likely lose money on each console from a strictly hardware point of view. The money is in licensing games. (remember the popular/. argument that Sony was making a mistake in opposing Bleem?) Now tell me, why would you actually pay market price for a console when you can have one that $GAME_COMPANY subsidizes much cheaper? And why would $GAME_COMPANY open the spec to allow game authors to write for the open platform without passing royalties on to $GAME_COMPANY?
It is widely circulated in some circles that electric plants emit more pollution generating the electricity required to drive an electric car
Some circles like willfully ignorant circles. There are many reasons this is not true, most of them reducible to the phrase "economy of scale."
I'm not an expert in this field
Clearly.
For some reason, though, the major car companies are only pursuing electrics.
Not true. I happen to know firsthand of a GM effort to make fuel cells economically feasible by and storage of hydrogen safe and non-explosive.
Not that pursuing electric technologies is incompatible, either. The company in the above arrticle is selling the regenerative drivetrain technology. When you say "hydrogen powered," you probably mean fuel cell, which generates electricity. You then need an electric motor to send power to the wheels. If you had one of these drivetrains in it, you would get an electric drivetrain and regenerative braking in one.
Did you know that for every electric car Honda sells, they lose around $3,000? That's because it has 2 engines, one gas and one electric. Neato, eh?
Uh... Like I said, hydrogen fuel cell cars have two engines too.
Your suspicion is based on disbelief in spookiness, no matter how well accepted and reproducible it is in the laboratory. Quantum "spookiness" is real. Quantum algorithms that solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time are real. They do this because the spookiness of superposition allows exponential parallelization.
If there is a stumbling block for quantum computers, it is in engineering them. The math and physics behind them is sound. Engineering a qubit that maintains phase relationships with other qubits for a long enough period of time to carry out a calculation is the issue, not your superstition that spooky-fast solvers are impossible in principle.
Not just cell games though. My collection of TI-85 games was the only thing that kept me from stabbing myself in the eye with a pencil during high school math class.
I teach part time and let me tell you, there's nothing more infuriating than seeing a student out there in the classroom playing his stinking cell phone while I'm lecturing.
I think I'd rather you had stabbed yourself in the eye, or at least had the decency to get out of the classroom.
I wonder what the effective range is? A maser sniper riffle would be silent, could do damage or kill quickly, and hard to detect if your not looking for it.
A "sniper rifle" would have to be HUGE, since the horn aperture would need to be big enough to overcome the diffraction limit. You know those microwave horns you see on building rooftops? That's what you're looking at to direct energy over long distances without diffraction.
Slashdot Mirror
I now understand from most people whom I have related my horror stories to, that the prevailing attitude is, "Don't upgrade from 6.x to 7.0; wipe and do a fresh install."
That would have been unacceptable given my investment in setting up the machine over the past few years. Did RH recognize this problem with the upgrade path? If so, why wasn't a warning given?
Bingo Foo
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Um, radians?
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Bingo Foo
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Nope. You added the "to something outside the universe". That's the fallacy.
Where else could it shift the regression?
Come on, I'm a physicist, and I stopped falling for that line as an undergrad. They are the laws of physics? They are imperfect models that match observations better than any other models we have yet found. Pardon the stereotyping, but you seem to have a case of high-energy hubris.
Bingo Foo
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But the physical universe does have a definite origin. Invoking a God, which I agree can appear logically shady, is not the same thing as invoking a universe that exists without creation, since a God having the property of self-existence does not acquire its being, but the universe, by observational evidence, did acquire its being.
Bingo Foo
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Damn. ROTFL. I already blew my moderator points and posted to this discussion. MOD THIS UP!
Bingo Foo
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And I still disagree with your assertion that you can write down a completely consistent set of physical laws. "Any field equation" is a model of limited scope, not a comprehensive system of laws for a universe. Certainly you know that the vacuum energy predicted by "any field equation" is already inconsistent with our observable universe? Yet it is useful as a predictive model within its limited scope. Just don't overestimate its validity.
And I wasn't confusing the issue by invoking Godel's theorem. I was demonstrating that you can't explore all of the logical implications of your system if you assume it is consistent, and by the Theorem, if you did explore all of the implications (completeness), it would be inconsistent.
Bingo Foo
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Uhhh... Ok, if that were the next logical question, the answer might be God(2), and God(3), and so on. You can either ask this forever, or terminate it at some point with "God(N) exists independent of cause." Having done that, God(1) through God(N-1) become moot, and your "+2 Insightful" question is revealed as the typical, tired, pseudophilosophic gibe of the proud, "educated" village atheist.
Bingo Foo
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There are plenty of laws of physics that are logically consistent, the real question is whether there's a unique set of them that agree with known observations. Right now that answer is "no", but may change with future observations.
No, I meant what I said. For the universe to exist without a cause, it must be a logical necessity, independent of circumstance or accident. And in fact, you can't claim irrefutibly that there are other sets of laws of physics that are logically consistent. I meant really logically consistent. You just can't work out all of the consequences of another proposed set of physical laws.
Example: What if there were N dimensions? Seems OK, and you get some gee-whiz insights based on taking our current universe and replacing the number of dimensions (11, I believe is the string theory number) with something else. Work out the implications further, and you realize that more needs to be changed. "Hmmm... Can't be a gravitational force in this universe...." Keep working out the implications, and you might find: "Hmmm... can't be conservation principles in this universe...." Go further, and who knows: "Hmmm... P and ~P in this universe." Eventually you might see the whole thing crumble to an honest to goodness logical contradiction. You would be playing reductio ad absurdum on an unparalleled scale.
Godel's theorem ups the ante. If the set of laws you propose are sufficiently complex (at least as complex as ordinary arithmetic) then you can never know all of the logical implications of that system.
The point is that either:
Bingo Foo
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Until physics can show, as some have said, "whether God had a choice in the creation of the universe," this is an open question. Unless the existence of the universe in its present form, with all the particle masses and coupling constants as they are, is shown to be an immutable logical necessity, there is reason to believe that there was a selection process of some sort in the creation of the universe, and this implies a preexisting cause. (preexisting here meaning in a logical sense. You can't preexist the universe chronologically; time is only defined within the universe.)
We know that the universe had a singular beginning, at a finite time in the past. Some might suspect that the laws of physics are the only laws of physics that can be logically consistent, but there is no reason to beleive that at this point.
For this reason, I believe that there is a logical necessity for something else as a logical cause of the universe, and I now have a choice: an infinite regression of causes for that cause or a terminating sequence with the primary cause being the functional equivalent of "God."
Bingo Foo
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Grow up, editors.
Bingo Foo
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More info on WEP can be found here.
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For every nutcase redneck who promotes white power, there's a rainbow coalition website who would have been edged out by our republican, white congress, some of whom were in office and voted against civil-rights legislation in the 60's.
I had to laugh at this. It's so wrong in so many ways.
Bingo Foo
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No innovation, indeed.
Bingo Foo
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I've got a beef with moderators who browse at +2, highest scores first...
good job, rmstar
Bingo Foo
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It turns out that Martin Phillips, age 47, of Canton, OH does not win with this deal, but he's the only one.
Bingo Foo
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Anyone notice how the ACLU won't attack the media industry on behalf of our civil liberties of "fair use," but they rush in to silence religious speech and ensure that everyone has free access to porn?
Does anyone over there consider priorities?
All of this is typical /. fodder, but if you asked the average (American) citizen (not ACLU member) which is the bigger issue:
I think the order of importance is clear.
Bingo Foo
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No, they're too busy with their PS9 ad campaign to worry about the PS3.
Bingo Foo
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Bingo Foo
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Bingo Foo
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Some circles like willfully ignorant circles. There are many reasons this is not true, most of them reducible to the phrase "economy of scale."
I'm not an expert in this field
Clearly.
For some reason, though, the major car companies are only pursuing electrics.
Not true. I happen to know firsthand of a GM effort to make fuel cells economically feasible by and storage of hydrogen safe and non-explosive.
Not that pursuing electric technologies is incompatible, either. The company in the above arrticle is selling the regenerative drivetrain technology. When you say "hydrogen powered," you probably mean fuel cell, which generates electricity. You then need an electric motor to send power to the wheels. If you had one of these drivetrains in it, you would get an electric drivetrain and regenerative braking in one.
Did you know that for every electric car Honda sells, they lose around $3,000? That's because it has 2 engines, one gas and one electric. Neato, eh?
Uh... Like I said, hydrogen fuel cell cars have two engines too.
Bingo Foo
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Bingo Foo
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If there is a stumbling block for quantum computers, it is in engineering them. The math and physics behind them is sound. Engineering a qubit that maintains phase relationships with other qubits for a long enough period of time to carry out a calculation is the issue, not your superstition that spooky-fast solvers are impossible in principle.
Bingo Foo
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I teach part time and let me tell you, there's nothing more infuriating than seeing a student out there in the classroom playing his stinking cell phone while I'm lecturing.
I think I'd rather you had stabbed yourself in the eye, or at least had the decency to get out of the classroom.
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A "sniper rifle" would have to be HUGE, since the horn aperture would need to be big enough to overcome the diffraction limit. You know those microwave horns you see on building rooftops? That's what you're looking at to direct energy over long distances without diffraction.
Bingo Foo
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