Get rid of the "monetary" system. As long as we have money people will always conjure up creative ways to steal it. Our global society needs to move forward to the "star trek" world where money doesn't exist. I know, I'm asking for the impossible.
Not impossible. Just not likely to happen in the near future. I consider a moneyless society plausible in the future, if you have the following situation:
* nearly-free energy (e.g. large-scale fusion reactors) * no shortage of resources for any substance that is important in people's lives (e.g., either we find ways to live without elements that are scarce, or we find ways of producing those elements via nuclear reactions from other more common elements) * highly automated manufacturing and agricultural industries (e.g. production of everything people need with very little human input) * no shortage of living space
Once this situation is reached, you can basically have a useful, working civilization without money. Citizens would, under some circumstances, be required to work for the state, to perform the small amount of necessary work that cannot be automated.
Money might still exist in such a civilization, but it would not be a basis around which virtually the entirity of one's life revolved. It would likely only be used for acquiring luxuries, such as artwork. A person could live perfectly adequately without any. In absence of a state-sponsored currency, it is plausible that a barter system of some kind might arise in its place.
stores that ship tangible goods can require that the shipping address be the same as the billing address and verify the billing address against information held by the credit card company.
There is a problem with this approach, which is that it alienates certain customers. For instance, I'm a director of a company and hold a credit card in the name of that company. The billing address on the account is our accountant's office. I don't want everything I order to go via our accountant, so any company that requires delivery to the billing address (and I do find quite a few of them) doesn't get our business.
One thing you can do, though, is to ensure you send an invoice to the billing address, and make sure that matches the account details. That way, at least the owner of the credit card finds out what's going on quickly.
The banks are starting to wise up to this, at least for high risk businesses. One of our clients was a company that sold replica blank-firing weapons online -- stuff that looks identical to real firearms. Their bank decided that they were quite a likely target for credit card fraud and insisted that they only deliver to cards' billing addresses. From what I understand, this restriction is pretty much universal in this line of business.
I'd imagine that Klingons would dish out some pretty massive punishment when scammers get caught, so you're unlikely to see many Klingons using these tools.
I don't know which would be worse... scamming, or being so weak as to require a _tool_ to help you do it.
Maybe not. But remember that there are other demands on your memory than just the game you're running: OS core memory use, background tasks, disk cache.
If you want to have 4GB available for a single process, you should probably have 6GB installed in the system.
Telecom or science equipment tend to be bulky and heavy. Even with the size reductions of the equipment we witness today, it's still big... too big for the payload of such an ultra-light aircraft.
Furthermore, theseà systems require power; power you either need to carry with you (fuel cells, batteries, etc.) or produce with solar cells. As most of the power from the cells is probably used for flight systems, not much would be left for payload powering, cooling, heating, etc.
On this test flight, the plane carried a 2kg payload, which was a fully working communications relay. The specs in the BBC article seem to suggest it could carry up to 3kg (i.e., there's a 3kg variability in the aircraft weight section). While the articles I've seen don't elaborate on why the flight was terminated, my suspicion was they only wanted to show that the plane would fly for as long as the relay's batteries would last: 80ish hours seems reasonable for a low-power (i.e. local area) radio relay with a small high-density battery pack.
With two of these you could fly continuously with more than enough time to recharge batteries and perform routine maintenance between flights.
Lithium-ion cells are unstable, intolerant of overcharging, and energy-dense enough to be a real problem when they fail.
LiFePO4 is a possible answer. They're a little more expensive than Li-ion, and have slightly lower energy density, but they don't evolve gasses during charging, which makes them somewhat safer.
That said, a large chemical fire like you could get from those big battery packs those desktop replacement laptops use would be a special kind of nightmare for any pilot. If they do ever ban lithium batteries and other related things on airplanes it will be very inconvenient but not necessarily stupid.
Batteries containing more than 2g of lithium are banned on aircraft. This almost certainly includes the batteries you're talking about.
Weigh the chance and danger of an iPod bursting into flame on a plane (extremely low, and extremely low, multiplied together)
Particularly seeing as it's almost certain that these fires occurred while the devices were on charge (which is by far the most dangerous point in a battery's lifecycle), and it's very unlikely that people will be charging their iPods on a plane.
"devalue assets by giving them away for free"? What a straw man.
No, speaking as a lay expert on company law, vux984 is right. A company in bankruptcy (or which can reasonably foresee bankruptcy in its future) is obliged to trade in the way that is in the best interests of its creditors.
In Valve's case, this would clearly be to keep steam running in the hope that it could be sold as a going concern to another company to raise funds to pay off those creditors. Any action otherwise could expose valve's directors to personal liability for the company's losses.
My main complaint about this is that you're installing executables from people of, at best, questionable morality. At least half the time somebody at school asks me to clean malware off their machine, it got there through a NoCD-type executable they downloaded off DC++.
It's all about how you go about finding and evaluating the crack before you install it. I've downloaded and installed maybe 20 or 30 of them, and have never had a single problem with malware. The process is simple:
* download from a trusted source. If you don't know how to find one, google to see how other people are doing it. * run a virus scanner on the exe * install in a VM first * run a malware scanner in the VM * only install on your main machine if you're happy with the results.
The Internet was created in an instantaneous moment when an Eliza program on a BBS gained self-recognition. What you read, right now, is really just this Eliza application that is creating exactly what you want to see
1) You assume that the number of states of a neuron is finite. Neurons are analog and not digital, so this is a false assumption.
Neurons act by pumping finite numbers of predictably charged molecules through membranes to build up or reduce potential differences across those membranes. Other chemical reactions vary the balance of proportions of molecules in different areas of the neuron, making this action harder or easier. The number of such molecules available to each neuron is large but finite. Therefore the number of possible states of a neuron is finite.
2) Related to the above, neurons are continually exchanging chemicals through their walls. The level of excitation of a neuron is not a single number, but a series of traveling waves. These depend on its inputs and also the chemical makeup in the local area around the axon. Again, infinite variation is quite possible.
No, it isn't. There are a finite number of points where the various chemicals involved in neural activity can cross the walls, and again each of these molecules represent a finite and quantifiable change to the behaviour of the nueron. The number of possible variations is extraordinarily high, but not infinite.
3) No neurons are irrelevant to the workings of the brain. Every neuron lost causes minute, possibly undetectable changes in thought patterns and personality.
If it is undectable, it is irrelevant. Yes, there must logically be some maximal set of neurons that could be lost from a particular brain before a measurable change would occur, but that set is not empty. It is theoretically possible to reduce the complexity of the problem by removing this set (or a larger one, given that some maximum allowable change can be defined).
Ask a chess player why he did some move and it's not "because I went through all the possible moves and materially it was the best" it's usually concepts like creating a good pawn structure, developing officers, pinning down the opponent, threatening key areas of the board, setting up for a knight fork or a mate threat and so on. As in "I don't know exactly where it's going, but I think my position now is better than the one I had". Computer chess programs don't do any of that, they just blindly test moves measuring material.
I take it you've never worked on a computer chess program. To be stronger than mediocre, a chess computer must take into account all of these things. Typically this happens in the board evaluation phase. For example, a chess computer will usually consider a board with a stronger pawn structure "better" than one that is weaker, all other things being equal.
There's a lot more to chess computers than counting material, and this is actually one of the reasons why Go is so hard: apart from the shere enormity of the playing space, we just don't have heuristics for playing Go that are as good as the ones we know for Chess. It's a much more intuitive game.
I'll be impressed when they can build a computer that can play Mornington Crescent at pro level.
As an aside from my previous comment, I won't be really impressed until they build a computer that play either Mao or Penultima at a level that could compete with the best human players.
I'll be impressed when they can build a computer that can play Mornington Crescent at pro level.
I've been working on an implementation of the Paddington-Klein algorithm crossed with a probability analyzer using forward-chained likely play Markov models based on a substantial set of recorded professional level games. I think I've come up with a good position scoring model, but to sustain play within appropriate time limits and avoid backshunting it'll need a substantially faster processor system than I've been able to finance myself. Fortunately, the algorithm is fully implementable in GPUs, and I think a suitable small network of quad-crossfire machines with quad core processors should be able to take on even the best players. I'm accepting donations, you know...
Not sure about the social networking aspect of it, but from what I see on the Mozilla Labs page it's the RSS reader I've been looking for for a while now...
Don't over use bricking. It has recently been down graded to not being able to bo without doing some "invasive" surgery on your motherboard. (Ranging from JTAG to soldering).
Actually, I was under the impression that this would be the case for an Eee with a misinstalled OS: they don't support any of the common forms of bootable external media (cdrom, floppy disk), so I would assume that the approach would be to reprogram their onboard flash via JTAG as with most other failed firmware updates.
The non-average user is going to buy the parts and build the box themselves as its cheaper and you end up with better hardware.
I can get an entry level Eee for under £200 from a local high street retailer. There's no way I could build a machine for less than that (at least not without reusing old parts).
Sure, I'd get better hardware at the end of it, but if the Eee does what I want, why would I bother?
The manual for the Linux EEE includes very detailed instructions on how to wipe Linux and install XP. (The manual for the Windows EEE does not contain instructions on wiping XP an installing Linux).
Presumably because only an idiot would pay £30 extra to get the Windows version then put Linux on it, and they don't want idiots bricking their laptops so that they have to go back to the shop for a reinstall...?
That's an interesting board. Thanks for the info. I've been planning on building a large multi-monitor config for some time, and had been thinking of nForce boards that would let me get 3 x16 graphics boards in, but if this one'll take four boards that's even better. I don't suppose you know if there's any issue using the boards independently, rather than joined for faster rendering...?
Slashdot Mirror
Get rid of the "monetary" system. As long as we have money people will always conjure up creative ways to steal it. Our global society needs to move forward to the "star trek" world where money doesn't exist. I know, I'm asking for the impossible.
Not impossible. Just not likely to happen in the near future. I consider a moneyless society plausible in the future, if you have the following situation:
* nearly-free energy (e.g. large-scale fusion reactors)
* no shortage of resources for any substance that is important in people's lives (e.g., either we find ways to live without elements that are scarce, or we find ways of producing those elements via nuclear reactions from other more common elements)
* highly automated manufacturing and agricultural industries (e.g. production of everything people need with very little human input)
* no shortage of living space
Once this situation is reached, you can basically have a useful, working civilization without money. Citizens would, under some circumstances, be required to work for the state, to perform the small amount of necessary work that cannot be automated.
Money might still exist in such a civilization, but it would not be a basis around which virtually the entirity of one's life revolved. It would likely only be used for acquiring luxuries, such as artwork. A person could live perfectly adequately without any. In absence of a state-sponsored currency, it is plausible that a barter system of some kind might arise in its place.
stores that ship tangible goods can require that the shipping address be the same as the billing address and verify the billing address against information held by the credit card company.
There is a problem with this approach, which is that it alienates certain customers. For instance, I'm a director of a company and hold a credit card in the name of that company. The billing address on the account is our accountant's office. I don't want everything I order to go via our accountant, so any company that requires delivery to the billing address (and I do find quite a few of them) doesn't get our business.
One thing you can do, though, is to ensure you send an invoice to the billing address, and make sure that matches the account details. That way, at least the owner of the credit card finds out what's going on quickly.
The banks are starting to wise up to this, at least for high risk businesses. One of our clients was a company that sold replica blank-firing weapons online -- stuff that looks identical to real firearms. Their bank decided that they were quite a likely target for credit card fraud and insisted that they only deliver to cards' billing addresses. From what I understand, this restriction is pretty much universal in this line of business.
I'd imagine that Klingons would dish out some pretty massive punishment when scammers get caught, so you're unlikely to see many Klingons using these tools.
I don't know which would be worse... scamming, or being so weak as to require a _tool_ to help you do it.
Can any games use over 4GB yet? I'm just curious.
Maybe not. But remember that there are other demands on your memory than just the game you're running: OS core memory use, background tasks, disk cache.
If you want to have 4GB available for a single process, you should probably have 6GB installed in the system.
Telecom or science equipment tend to be bulky and heavy. Even with the size reductions of the equipment we witness today, it's still big... too big for the payload of such an ultra-light aircraft.
Furthermore, theseà systems require power; power you either need to carry with you (fuel cells, batteries, etc.) or produce with solar cells. As most of the power from the cells is probably used for flight systems, not much would be left for payload powering, cooling, heating, etc.
On this test flight, the plane carried a 2kg payload, which was a fully working communications relay. The specs in the BBC article seem to suggest it could carry up to 3kg (i.e., there's a 3kg variability in the aircraft weight section). While the articles I've seen don't elaborate on why the flight was terminated, my suspicion was they only wanted to show that the plane would fly for as long as the relay's batteries would last: 80ish hours seems reasonable for a low-power (i.e. local area) radio relay with a small high-density battery pack.
With two of these you could fly continuously with more than enough time to recharge batteries and perform routine maintenance between flights.
Lithium-ion cells are unstable, intolerant of overcharging, and energy-dense enough to be a real problem when they fail.
LiFePO4 is a possible answer. They're a little more expensive than Li-ion, and have slightly lower energy density, but they don't evolve gasses during charging, which makes them somewhat safer.
That said, a large chemical fire like you could get from those big battery packs those desktop replacement laptops use would be a special kind of nightmare for any pilot. If they do ever ban lithium batteries and other related things on airplanes it will be very inconvenient but not necessarily stupid.
Batteries containing more than 2g of lithium are banned on aircraft. This almost certainly includes the batteries you're talking about.
Weigh the chance and danger of an iPod bursting into flame on a plane (extremely low, and extremely low, multiplied together)
Particularly seeing as it's almost certain that these fires occurred while the devices were on charge (which is by far the most dangerous point in a battery's lifecycle), and it's very unlikely that people will be charging their iPods on a plane.
At 0.001% of Nanos affected, it's probably more likely that your plane's engine bursts into flame than a Nano brought onto the flight.
Particularly seeing as lithium battery fires happen almost universally during charging, which is highly unlikely to be occurring on the flight.
"devalue assets by giving them away for free"? What a straw man.
No, speaking as a lay expert on company law, vux984 is right. A company in bankruptcy (or which can reasonably foresee bankruptcy in its future) is obliged to trade in the way that is in the best interests of its creditors.
In Valve's case, this would clearly be to keep steam running in the hope that it could be sold as a going concern to another company to raise funds to pay off those creditors. Any action otherwise could expose valve's directors to personal liability for the company's losses.
My main complaint about this is that you're installing executables from people of, at best, questionable morality. At least half the time somebody at school asks me to clean malware off their machine, it got there through a NoCD-type executable they downloaded off DC++.
It's all about how you go about finding and evaluating the crack before you install it. I've downloaded and installed maybe 20 or 30 of them, and have never had a single problem with malware. The process is simple:
* download from a trusted source. If you don't know how to find one, google to see how other people are doing it.
* run a virus scanner on the exe
* install in a VM first
* run a malware scanner in the VM
* only install on your main machine if you're happy with the results.
That must be a log of Open Source silicon. Oh, wait...
Why wait when open-source server processors are available now?
Really, the cost of [a mission to take pictures of the earth from space] is no longer astronomical
ROTFLMAO.
(BTW, are you the same szyzyg I used to know on mono?)
The Internet was created in an instantaneous moment when an Eliza program on a BBS gained self-recognition. What you read, right now, is really just this Eliza application that is creating exactly what you want to see
Which is of course why it produce goatse.
Now everything makes... err... no sense at all.
I DID NOT WANT TO SEE THAT!
Ever tried Google Reader ?
Yes. It is, in fact, what I use currently. However, it lacks the full-text at-a-glance view that this plugin features.
1) You assume that the number of states of a neuron is finite. Neurons are analog and not digital, so this is a false assumption.
Neurons act by pumping finite numbers of predictably charged molecules through membranes to build up or reduce potential differences across those membranes. Other chemical reactions vary the balance of proportions of molecules in different areas of the neuron, making this action harder or easier. The number of such molecules available to each neuron is large but finite. Therefore the number of possible states of a neuron is finite.
2) Related to the above, neurons are continually exchanging chemicals through their walls. The level of excitation of a neuron is not a single number, but a series of traveling waves. These depend on its inputs and also the chemical makeup in the local area around the axon. Again, infinite variation is quite possible.
No, it isn't. There are a finite number of points where the various chemicals involved in neural activity can cross the walls, and again each of these molecules represent a finite and quantifiable change to the behaviour of the nueron. The number of possible variations is extraordinarily high, but not infinite.
3) No neurons are irrelevant to the workings of the brain. Every neuron lost causes minute, possibly undetectable changes in thought patterns and personality.
If it is undectable, it is irrelevant. Yes, there must logically be some maximal set of neurons that could be lost from a particular brain before a measurable change would occur, but that set is not empty. It is theoretically possible to reduce the complexity of the problem by removing this set (or a larger one, given that some maximum allowable change can be defined).
Ask a chess player why he did some move and it's not "because I went through all the possible moves and materially it was the best" it's usually concepts like creating a good pawn structure, developing officers, pinning down the opponent, threatening key areas of the board, setting up for a knight fork or a mate threat and so on. As in "I don't know exactly where it's going, but I think my position now is better than the one I had". Computer chess programs don't do any of that, they just blindly test moves measuring material.
I take it you've never worked on a computer chess program. To be stronger than mediocre, a chess computer must take into account all of these things. Typically this happens in the board evaluation phase. For example, a chess computer will usually consider a board with a stronger pawn structure "better" than one that is weaker, all other things being equal.
There's a lot more to chess computers than counting material, and this is actually one of the reasons why Go is so hard: apart from the shere enormity of the playing space, we just don't have heuristics for playing Go that are as good as the ones we know for Chess. It's a much more intuitive game.
I'll be impressed when they can build a computer that can play Mornington Crescent at pro level.
As an aside from my previous comment, I won't be really impressed until they build a computer that play either Mao or Penultima at a level that could compete with the best human players.
I'll be impressed when they can build a computer that can play Mornington Crescent at pro level.
I've been working on an implementation of the Paddington-Klein algorithm crossed with a probability analyzer using forward-chained likely play Markov models based on a substantial set of recorded professional level games. I think I've come up with a good position scoring model, but to sustain play within appropriate time limits and avoid backshunting it'll need a substantially faster processor system than I've been able to finance myself. Fortunately, the algorithm is fully implementable in GPUs, and I think a suitable small network of quad-crossfire machines with quad core processors should be able to take on even the best players. I'm accepting donations, you know...
Not sure about the social networking aspect of it, but from what I see on the Mozilla Labs page it's the RSS reader I've been looking for for a while now...
Don't over use bricking. It has recently been down graded to not being able to bo without doing some "invasive" surgery on your motherboard. (Ranging from JTAG to soldering).
Actually, I was under the impression that this would be the case for an Eee with a misinstalled OS: they don't support any of the common forms of bootable external media (cdrom, floppy disk), so I would assume that the approach would be to reprogram their onboard flash via JTAG as with most other failed firmware updates.
The non-average user is going to buy the parts and build the box themselves as its cheaper and you end up with better hardware.
I can get an entry level Eee for under £200 from a local high street retailer. There's no way I could build a machine for less than that (at least not without reusing old parts).
Sure, I'd get better hardware at the end of it, but if the Eee does what I want, why would I bother?
The manual for the Linux EEE includes very detailed instructions on how to wipe Linux and install XP. (The manual for the Windows EEE does not contain instructions on wiping XP an installing Linux).
Presumably because only an idiot would pay £30 extra to get the Windows version then put Linux on it, and they don't want idiots bricking their laptops so that they have to go back to the shop for a reinstall...?
FFS, this is the same country that made Bill a Knight
That's an Honorary Knight, please. You don't get to be a _real_ knight if you aren't British.
That's an interesting board. Thanks for the info. I've been planning on building a large multi-monitor config for some time, and had been thinking of nForce boards that would let me get 3 x16 graphics boards in, but if this one'll take four boards that's even better. I don't suppose you know if there's any issue using the boards independently, rather than joined for faster rendering...?