How? I work for many companies in dinky countries (news services and publishers -- legit businesses). They have plenty of corruption internally, but there's really no toehold that the United States has on them. If they are making money through companies arriving, they aren't going to change things. They are masters of their little corner of the world and they like it; many have just shrugged off European absentee rulers and are quite enamored with their own sovernity. You'd be surprised how little influence the United States has in some of these countries.
Many people in first world countries think they carry the biggest stick and the sun sets on their ass. They'd be surprised that the population and rulers of the many very capable small countries don't see it that way.
Why would they use base eight? Or are you trying to imply that computers use base eight? They don't. They use base 2, of which 8 is 2^3, so it appears fairly often, sort of like 1,000 is commonly used in base ten. But there is no reason that 8 has any more importance than 16 or 65536.
Octal is/was popular on systems with numbers of bits in a word divisible by 9, but that was for representation sake (similar to how hex is popular on systems that have the number of bits in a word divisible by 16).
Other than a mistaken joke, I can't fathom a reason for you to suggest that a base 8 number would be useful. Perhaps I missed some sort of weather related aspect?
Yup. I have no idea what will work, just as people in 1899 had a pretty good idea that there was going to be heavier than air, powered flight soon... but they had no idea what form it would take. For that matter, it has taken quite a few forms in the century since... as have all the other forms of transportation. Ships went from sail to steam to nuclear power.
I can easily guess that it will be a row of seats (boarding and fare density issues dictate that), and there will likely be windows (people like windows). That describes everything from a bus to a subway to a jetliner to a island ferry, and will likely describe the spaceships of the future -- at least the orbital transports. After that I refuse to make a prediction. Although I have a few guesses, they would simply be wrong. The fact that something will be invented to get us out of the gravity well is pretty reliable; the mechanism that does so is unpredictable.
Hardly a one off project. We have one commercial spaceport in the United States (plus a couple non-public ones). Do you think that will serve a planet's worth of traffic if space travel catches on? That's like saying that there will only be one airport or one port (as in the original, where boats dock). I mean, all the oceans are connected... why make more than one port?
I also like the slow lift methods with blimps. But my point still stands... is is unlikely that there will be a leap in rocket fuel comparable to the advances in computing. Chemical fuel that you carry with you isn't that efficient, even when it's used as efficiently as possible.
I don't claim that the elevator is *the* answer, but it's likely that traditional rockets (certainly staged rockets, including the shuttle, where you throw away most of the very expensive vehicle each trip) are *not* the answer. That was my point, so you're agreeing with me.;)
Rocket fuel is already (relatively) cheap. Even if you come up with a more efficient fuel, you're still screwed with having to lift your fuel tank as you climb and go to mach 25. You're questioning why you might not want to have the vast majority of your launch mass being fuel.
Increasing computing power is easy, the laws of thermodynamics are a bitch. That's why we have yesterday's supercomputers in most houses, but flying cars don't exist.
I dunno - I drove on 80 from the Pacific to the Atlantic and happily used a little one I picked up at a truck stop. The sound quality is FM, which isn't CD quality by any stretch, but it was fine for a long trip... which as you say, is exactly where you need it most.
I had to bump the frequency around a couple times, but it was a daily event, and I was driving 8 to 12 hours each day.
Plus, I think that they are referring to aftermarket solutions that *provide* a jack line-in or USB port. I knew people with in dash replacement CD/MP3 players that provided that back in the late 90s.
I'm a news person. Been in the newspaper business for eight years now. I know they are a joke. I also know that they provide most of that nice text padding between the ads, so they are quite used.
Yup. Even non RPM based installs like debian based Kubuntu has rpm installed as part of the base install... it's the standard package format, and for commercial software -- where you can control, include or link your dependancies -- it's great.
HOLY CRAP! They managed to publish a link to an interview *months in the future*?!?!?!
How the hell did they manage that? I mean, this interview is only three days old! Mein Gott, the Slashdot editors continue to impress. Now if they can just post an interview with Linus and Gates in 2015, it would be perfect.
And I just finished washing my hands from fashioning a Klingon wall hanging from a block of cardboard from an old three ring binder, a strip of natural muslin (I have a couple bolts, as a minimum of several yards get used each month), waxed thread off a spool (I have a dozen spools of various colors), and industrial tile (which I also use to cover my work area to protect it from scratches and as palettes when painting). To decorate I used a black Sharpie and watercolor on the muslin, and acrylic paint (indian red, gold and vermilion) on the hanging tiles.
Tools used were a two inch brush (oh, I have a pot of watered down glue which I keep on hand; I also used it to bind a book earlier in the day), a couple other brushes, a razor blade, a sharpened screwdriver (to score the tile), a pair of needle nose pliers, some sandpaper, and a Dremel powertool (to drill out the holes for the lacing in the tiles). Plus a pushpin to pop the holes in the muslin covered cardboard. Oh, and a pencil and artist's eraser to sketch out the symbol before I painted it.
That's a hell of a chunk of stuff... and I pulled it all out of boxes on shelves above my desk.
I dislike a cozy feeling as well -- my living room has a few pieces of furniture and that is *it*. Even in my office, I have a wall of tools and boxes and another wall with a window and almost nothing else. It's where I face when I'm using my laptop. But at the same time, my hobbies do require a good chunk of "stuff", both tools and raw materials.
I can play music on just a guitar. It's nice, and that bit of wood and wire is all I need. But when I build an entire set of props for a stage production, I need a bunch of "stuff". I have indexed and labeled boxes full of various odds and ends, and it generally winds up getting used. I occasionally even pick up stuff on the ground when walking around -- a beat up hubcap that I found in the gutter became, a bit of clay and a mold casting later, the emblem on a guitar case.
I hate pack ratting... I am very aggressive when cleaning out the pantry, the bookshelves, my bedroom (one bed, one chest of drawers, two side tables with one lamp each, one cage full of mice). But I do have a ton of stuff useful for art and stage: foam heads with wigs in one closet, power tools in the basement, another closet full of fabric.
Don't equate "stuff" with material goods -- it is the useless stuff that are the only things that weigh you down. And the attachment to things that can be replaced (and almost everything can be replaced). I've moved cross country twice in the past few years and dropped quite a bit of stuff in each move. But I immediately start building up a storehouse of useful items.
Because it's not the items that are bad - it's how you feel about them and what you do with them. A football player needs a football. A musician needs an instrument. And other people wind up needing a bunch of stuff that is another man's garbage. The researcher needs their pile of books. The working musician needs a pile of gear. Stuff is not, in and of itself, bad.
It could easily be a heirloom or favorite piece. My Mom had a rocking chair for decades that was one of the only things that survived a childhood fire when she was 16. She rocked all her kids in it. It hardly fit in with the decor, but it had history. She let it go when it ceased being useful (started falling apart), but there were entire rooms of furniture that came and went before the rocking chair left the house.
It could be just that they like it, but having a core piece of furniture that you are attached to is common. My fiance loves an old antique hardwood dresser. Freaking heavy thing that we wound up having to haul cross country. Blearg. But she loves it.
Brilliant. Now, let's put your off-topic point aside and focus on the question... *after* he's done designing on paper, and he "fires up his IDE", what environment should he have? For that matter, what environment should he have when he's working with paper and pencils.
FWIW, I care mostly about lighting and airflow. I have two blinds on my window so I can open it in the morning, close it in the early afternoon and lower shades over the blinds when the low hanging sun shines directly into the window. I have a fan positioned outside the room with a remote so I can turn it up or down without having to walk back and forth trying to get the breeze just right.
Incidently, to address Mr. Cabri's comment, I don't use a pile of paper or pencils - I use strictly black pen and journals without the ability to tear anything out. Old habits from my college days. Everything is recorded and documented. I currently use Moleskine, although my fiance, a research chemist, uses Miquelrius. I'm amused that Moleskine seems to have become quite chic of late, which does make it easier to find them.
Yes, but my laptop shuts itself off in my backpack after the fan has been blocked and it overheats or the battery runs down. Terribly annoying.
Maybe I should run 'modprobe unrealistic_expectations' like most Linux users on Slashdot? It should load up modules 'fantasy_usage_scenarios', 'readit_inapost' and 'snd_fanboywhine'.
Heck, even servers get reboots now and then to load new kernels. Unless you like running insecure code...
Google announced that a janitor kicked around the idea of buying Taco Bell. Google stock rose $47 and Yum! Brands, owner of Taco Bell, had their stock go up $132.
Meanwhile eBay announced that they had struck a deal to buy Microsoft, WalMart and a US Mint. "We can now literally print our own money, plus we will have a near monopoly in both software and tangible retail goods", said eBay President Meg Whitman. Leery of the announcement, eBay's stock price dropped to only four cents per share. "I ain't gonna trust no dot com blip blip stock", said noted day trader Erwin Lapsey. "I lost my shirt on them, and they are all evil".
Microsoft President Steve Ballmer had only three words to say about the deal: "Developers! Developers! Developers!". The sweat running down his broad manly chest then shorted out the microphones, abruptly ending the press conferences. Meanwhile, deep inside Mum-Ra's lair, the lich formerly known as Sam Walton and current President-in-Secret wheezed his single word comment about the proposed merger: "...braaains...".
Add him as a foe (click on the little white sphere), go to your Preferences (link in the upper left corner), pick "Comments" and change your People Modifier setting to drop all posts by foes to -6. You'll never see his comments ever again.
Well, I didn't make up the term. The problem is that quite a few useful tools came out of "Pure AI" research with real world applications, so they are classified in the same field, but have little to do with Minsky's goals.
For a classic example, anybody using Emacs has AI to thank for that. Lisp originated as part of an IBM project arising out of one of Minsky's ideas and was finalized as part of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Project (again, Minsky was involved in that).
Like the space program, AI is full of many many spinoffs and useful "failed" experiments. The umbrella term AI covers quite a few useful theories and concepts, most of which have non-humanlike applications.
(I figure *you* know this, squarooticus, just tossing this out to those who don't).
I meant to pop a disclaimer in there that I knew you probably meant it as a joke - yours happened to be the post I tagged with my comment that applied more to the general conversation here. I even had a nice wording that tied it into the original poster's comment that it was a joke.
Both you and the grandparent are making the (common nowadays) mistake that the field of artificial intelligence is seeking to create any sort of sentient or even lifelike behavior. Sure, there's a bit of "emulating humans" in the field, but quite a bit of it is self regulating complex feedback systems wherein you feed a minimum of parameters and the system learns to balance input to output. AI as a scientific field has more to do with good thermostats that cool you down without a blast of cold air in the face and how many size 32 jeans to ship to the Tampa, Florida store in three months than a talking walking Robbie the Robot.
Real AI is here and working fine. Drive a nice car and flip on the AC or walk into a megamart and look at the shelves to see the results.
I agree with you. We don't know that CFCs caused the ozone hole (or even if the hole is something new). However, it is a good, viable theory and getting rid of them in industrial processes have only killed a number of people measured in the thousands (well, tens or hundreds possibly, but still likely less than a million lives lost).
The alternative was billions of lives lost as the ozone layer disappeared. Most environmentalists appear to have willingly killed those thousands of people on the idea that the CFC theory was correct in order to save many more people. I happen to agree with them... but I'm not dumb enough to think it might not be a mistaken theory or put out of my mind the lives lost because cheap refrigeration and manufacturing processes aren't available.
Heh. I thought of that right after I hit "Post". Bitboyz was riding their connection so much (intentionally or not) I always mentally think "Future Crew".
Slashdot Mirror
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Evan
Many people in first world countries think they carry the biggest stick and the sun sets on their ass. They'd be surprised that the population and rulers of the many very capable small countries don't see it that way.
--
Evan
Octal is/was popular on systems with numbers of bits in a word divisible by 9, but that was for representation sake (similar to how hex is popular on systems that have the number of bits in a word divisible by 16).
Other than a mistaken joke, I can't fathom a reason for you to suggest that a base 8 number would be useful. Perhaps I missed some sort of weather related aspect?
--
Evan
I can easily guess that it will be a row of seats (boarding and fare density issues dictate that), and there will likely be windows (people like windows). That describes everything from a bus to a subway to a jetliner to a island ferry, and will likely describe the spaceships of the future -- at least the orbital transports. After that I refuse to make a prediction. Although I have a few guesses, they would simply be wrong. The fact that something will be invented to get us out of the gravity well is pretty reliable; the mechanism that does so is unpredictable.
--
Evan
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Evan
I don't claim that the elevator is *the* answer, but it's likely that traditional rockets (certainly staged rockets, including the shuttle, where you throw away most of the very expensive vehicle each trip) are *not* the answer. That was my point, so you're agreeing with me. ;)
--
Evan
Increasing computing power is easy, the laws of thermodynamics are a bitch. That's why we have yesterday's supercomputers in most houses, but flying cars don't exist.
--
Evan
I had to bump the frequency around a couple times, but it was a daily event, and I was driving 8 to 12 hours each day.
Plus, I think that they are referring to aftermarket solutions that *provide* a jack line-in or USB port. I knew people with in dash replacement CD/MP3 players that provided that back in the late 90s.
--
Evan
I'm a news person. Been in the newspaper business for eight years now. I know they are a joke. I also know that they provide most of that nice text padding between the ads, so they are quite used.
--
Evan
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Evan
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Evan
How the hell did they manage that? I mean, this interview is only three days old! Mein Gott, the Slashdot editors continue to impress. Now if they can just post an interview with Linus and Gates in 2015, it would be perfect.
Can you help out?
--
Evan
Tools used were a two inch brush (oh, I have a pot of watered down glue which I keep on hand; I also used it to bind a book earlier in the day), a couple other brushes, a razor blade, a sharpened screwdriver (to score the tile), a pair of needle nose pliers, some sandpaper, and a Dremel powertool (to drill out the holes for the lacing in the tiles). Plus a pushpin to pop the holes in the muslin covered cardboard. Oh, and a pencil and artist's eraser to sketch out the symbol before I painted it.
That's a hell of a chunk of stuff... and I pulled it all out of boxes on shelves above my desk.
I dislike a cozy feeling as well -- my living room has a few pieces of furniture and that is *it*. Even in my office, I have a wall of tools and boxes and another wall with a window and almost nothing else. It's where I face when I'm using my laptop. But at the same time, my hobbies do require a good chunk of "stuff", both tools and raw materials.
I can play music on just a guitar. It's nice, and that bit of wood and wire is all I need. But when I build an entire set of props for a stage production, I need a bunch of "stuff". I have indexed and labeled boxes full of various odds and ends, and it generally winds up getting used. I occasionally even pick up stuff on the ground when walking around -- a beat up hubcap that I found in the gutter became, a bit of clay and a mold casting later, the emblem on a guitar case.
I hate pack ratting... I am very aggressive when cleaning out the pantry, the bookshelves, my bedroom (one bed, one chest of drawers, two side tables with one lamp each, one cage full of mice). But I do have a ton of stuff useful for art and stage: foam heads with wigs in one closet, power tools in the basement, another closet full of fabric.
Don't equate "stuff" with material goods -- it is the useless stuff that are the only things that weigh you down. And the attachment to things that can be replaced (and almost everything can be replaced). I've moved cross country twice in the past few years and dropped quite a bit of stuff in each move. But I immediately start building up a storehouse of useful items.
Because it's not the items that are bad - it's how you feel about them and what you do with them. A football player needs a football. A musician needs an instrument. And other people wind up needing a bunch of stuff that is another man's garbage. The researcher needs their pile of books. The working musician needs a pile of gear. Stuff is not, in and of itself, bad.
--
Evan
It could be just that they like it, but having a core piece of furniture that you are attached to is common. My fiance loves an old antique hardwood dresser. Freaking heavy thing that we wound up having to haul cross country. Blearg. But she loves it.
--
Evan
FWIW, I care mostly about lighting and airflow. I have two blinds on my window so I can open it in the morning, close it in the early afternoon and lower shades over the blinds when the low hanging sun shines directly into the window. I have a fan positioned outside the room with a remote so I can turn it up or down without having to walk back and forth trying to get the breeze just right.
Incidently, to address Mr. Cabri's comment, I don't use a pile of paper or pencils - I use strictly black pen and journals without the ability to tear anything out. Old habits from my college days. Everything is recorded and documented. I currently use Moleskine, although my fiance, a research chemist, uses Miquelrius. I'm amused that Moleskine seems to have become quite chic of late, which does make it easier to find them.
--
Evan
Maybe I should run 'modprobe unrealistic_expectations' like most Linux users on Slashdot? It should load up modules 'fantasy_usage_scenarios', 'readit_inapost' and 'snd_fanboywhine'.
Heck, even servers get reboots now and then to load new kernels. Unless you like running insecure code...
--
Evan
Meanwhile eBay announced that they had struck a deal to buy Microsoft, WalMart and a US Mint. "We can now literally print our own money, plus we will have a near monopoly in both software and tangible retail goods", said eBay President Meg Whitman. Leery of the announcement, eBay's stock price dropped to only four cents per share. "I ain't gonna trust no dot com blip blip stock", said noted day trader Erwin Lapsey. "I lost my shirt on them, and they are all evil".
Microsoft President Steve Ballmer had only three words to say about the deal: "Developers! Developers! Developers!". The sweat running down his broad manly chest then shorted out the microphones, abruptly ending the press conferences. Meanwhile, deep inside Mum-Ra's lair, the lich formerly known as Sam Walton and current President-in-Secret wheezed his single word comment about the proposed merger: "...braaains...".
--
Evan
--
Evan
For a classic example, anybody using Emacs has AI to thank for that. Lisp originated as part of an IBM project arising out of one of Minsky's ideas and was finalized as part of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Project (again, Minsky was involved in that).
Like the space program, AI is full of many many spinoffs and useful "failed" experiments. The umbrella term AI covers quite a few useful theories and concepts, most of which have non-humanlike applications.
(I figure *you* know this, squarooticus, just tossing this out to those who don't).
--
Evan
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Evan
(Okay, you have less than 10 seconds to answer).
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Evan
Real AI is here and working fine. Drive a nice car and flip on the AC or walk into a megamart and look at the shelves to see the results.
--
Evan
The alternative was billions of lives lost as the ozone layer disappeared. Most environmentalists appear to have willingly killed those thousands of people on the idea that the CFC theory was correct in order to save many more people. I happen to agree with them... but I'm not dumb enough to think it might not be a mistaken theory or put out of my mind the lives lost because cheap refrigeration and manufacturing processes aren't available.
--
Evan
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Evan
--
Evan