Thanks for the compliment. You're the first person who has mentioned it. I was thinking that it's about time to change it, but I'll hold off for a little while, now that you've puffed up my ego probably more than it deserves.
(My next.sig will probably be "Any sufficiently advanced Perl script is indistinguishable from magic. - Larry C. Clarke". It's slightly geekier than my current.sig, but may be more appropriate for slashdot.)
I remember using a CDC 6400 in the mid-70s. IIRC, the CPU had a 60-bit "long" word size, and a 15-bit "short" word size. The OS used 6-bit character encoding, so ten characters fit into a long word.
This could be a good thing.... affect the consumer and give a more relevent expeirence.
Except that the only thing that a driver should be "experiencing" is driving safely. Billboards that are tailored to those driving by will simply distract them more, and possibly lead to more accidents. This is not a "good thing".
It would be interesting to see if the use of such billboards increases the incidence of accidents in their vicinity.
if copyrights were treated more like physical property, and subjected to a "copyright tax".
Well, the way it is (supposed to be), currently, is that the "tax" is the value of the copyrighted work, and the "payment" is deferred until the copyright expires. At that point, the work becomes public property, and the original owner loses the copyright. This is like acquiring title to a piece of land, being able to live on it for a certain number of years without paying taxes, and then having to give up the land in its entirety after a certain number of years.
Silica gel is the most common type of dessicant. That's the little packet labeled "DO NOT EAT" in just about any consumer electronics packaging. I've saved the little packets in a jar for years, but I'm sure you can also buy them directly.
I believe that craft stores sell it to gardeners, who use it to dry cut flowers. Since the flowers are packed in the gel itself (like hard drives are packed in foam peanuts), rather than just being placed in a container with a packet of the stuff, my guess is that it is sold in bulk, probably in 1-5 lb bags (but I haven't actually bought any myself, so I could be wrong). And, as another poster mentioned, you can restore the gel by baking it at low temperature.
You are thinking of Roger Daltry, who was also the backup drummer for the Rolling Stones. He also starred in the movie "Help!", along with the other members of the band: Jenny McArthy, Vladimir Lenin, Harrison Ford, and the "Fifth Stone", Ringo Starr.
That's why you always back up twice. The likelyhood of scratches occuring in the same place on both CDs/DVDs is very small. I have two sets of CD cases sitting next to each other. The CDs in the second cases are exact copies of the CDs in the first. And if I had the time money, and inclination, I would make a third copy of each CD and store it off site, say, in a safe deposit box.
Ingredients are so you know what went into your food.
OK, I want to know whether GMOs are in the food that I buy.
I'm a vegetarian, and don't want to consume food that contains animal genes. For example, I believe that I read once that someone had inserted genes from an animal into a fruit species so that it was more frost-hardy. (IIRC, it produced an antifreeze.) I do not wish to each such fruit.
I also do not wish to eat food that contains pesticides, other than those that an unGMOed plant would normally produce by itself through biological means.
These dietary preferences of mine may seem backward or unscientific, but I have the right to eat what I want, and not to eat what I don't want. I also don't believe that truth-in-labelling should be confined only to GMOs. Other information should also be listed (e.g., the maximum percentage of vermin droppings in grain ingredients, etc.), and I should be able to make up my own mind whether I want to buy a product, based on the information provided.
Maybe it's because people have a history of overhyping 'bad' products so that people have a fear of them out of proportion to the risks.
That's a pretty poor excuse for suppressing information. Why include nutrition information? Why list ingredients at all? People have a right to know what they put into their bodies, and then to make up their own minds, whether or not their decisions are based on logic or emotions.
Some people have an extreme allergic reaction to a substance in peanuts. What happens if the gene that makes this substance is transplanted into corn? (OK, this particular allergen is well known, so it's unlikely that this would happen in this particular case, but there are many, many allergens out there, in many different plants and animals.)
In addition, some people do not eat various types of plants or animals for ethical or religious reasons. What happens when a pig gene is transplanted into other plants/animals?
no sane food/drug company would risk the impact of such a level of carelessness/unconcern
Well, one could state that no sane company would "cook the books" to the tune of over $6bn and not get caught, but...
Companies are run by people. History is replete with examples of less-than-sane people in positions of (economic or political) power. And in this present era, where quarterly results are more important than long-term results, is it too far a stretch to image that there would be some people who would "cut corners" where safety is concerned?
It is also possible that people can delude themselves into thinking that something is safe, when it actually isn't. I remember reading, many many years ago, about the president or CEO of a company that was selling pills that contained a radioactive material. Responding to concerns that ingesting a radioactive substance was unsafe, this person ingested a massive amount of the material, in front of reporters, to show his confidence in the safety of the product. He died shortly thereafter.
The stuff within parentheses ("(...)") was meant to be humorous (i.e., non-factual BS); the stuff without was meant to be serious (i.e., factual non-BS).
(For example, the guy's name wasn't Larry Dopplershift; it was really Laurence Dopplershift. (That was another joke.))
Re:So why do machine-level programmers confuse...
on
Science Askew
·
· Score: 1
I'm afraid I don't get it....Could someone explain?
If you approach an object, the light it emits appears to you to be at a higher frequency. (This is called a "Doppler Shift", after Larry Dopplershift, who discovered it while skydiving.) So if you are approching a red object fast enough, the red light will increase in frequncy relative to your velocity, and appear blue, because blue has a higher frequency than red. (If you go outside at various times and look at the sky, you will find that the sky is blue more often than it is red. Therefore, the blue sky occurs more frequently, and thus, by definition, has a higher frequency. This proves that blue has a higher frequency than red.)
Imagine building the frame of a house in a big tank
But how would you build the tank? Inside a larger tank? But then how would you build the larger tank? etc.
You would have to build the tank using conventional methods. It seems to me that it would be easier to just build the frame normally. Just because something is cool, doesn't mean that it should be used for everything. The only way that I can think of that this method may be useful in homebuilding is for prefab homes (e.g., trailer homes), because once the tank is built, it can be reused. But even there, it seems to be more trouble than it's worth. Anchoring or holding things in place is much easier on a planet's surface than in space.
Except that there is this thing called "food" that will replace whatever minerals the water leaches out (provided that the right food is consumed). Most of the "beneficial" minerals absorbed or expelled from the body come from food, not what's in drinking water. (There are exceptions, like fluoridated water, but they are not essential for life.)
A person who eats a balanced diet would have no problems surviving by also drinking only pure water.
The article mentions using images (although GIFs, not PNGs). The problem with bitmapped images is that they do not scale well with the text on the page.
Actually, the technology is over 10 years old. I remember reading an article in Byte Magazine in the early '80s (before it became crappy), where someone hooked a spinning mirror up to an oscilloscope, producing 3-D vector graphics. (He had it hooked up to an oscilloscope because graphic CRT displays were not yet available for the average consumer.)
If you decide one day to stop paying your credit card, do you think the bank is going to sequester a grand jury to indict you for... breaking you agreement to pay your minimum monthly balance?
No, but if I charge a purchase to my credit card, and have no intention of paying it back, that's fraud (AFAIK, IANAL, M O U S E), and I should not be surprised by an arrest and indictment. It depends on intent. In the case of the credit card, intent is difficult to prove. In the case of the uncapped modems, it is not.
(Personally, I agree with other posts here that the ISP should be throttling bandwidth on its end.)
Exactly how long would it take to pressurize and depressurize an airlock capable of fitting one of these cars in?
I shouldn't imagine that it would take long, if the airlock were only slightly larger than the car itself. But you don't have to put the entire car in an airlock; all you have to do is put the airlock around the car doors. That is, the car would "dock" with the access doors (like the shuttle docks with the ISS), while the car itself remains in a vacuum. If the doors are closely matched, there will be very little air to evacuate. (If you have ever been to Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, you will have a good idea of how this could work by checking out the trams that travel between the concourses. The trams arrive at a station, and several sets of matched doors open to allow egress/ingress.)
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the compliment.
.sig will probably be "Any sufficiently advanced Perl script is indistinguishable from magic. - Larry C. Clarke". .sig, but may be more appropriate for slashdot.)
You're the first person who has mentioned it.
I was thinking that it's about time to change it, but I'll hold off for a little while, now that you've puffed up my ego probably more than it deserves.
(My next
It's slightly geekier than my current
Honeywell used 9 bit bytes circa 1970
I remember using a CDC 6400 in the mid-70s.
IIRC, the CPU had a 60-bit "long" word size, and a 15-bit "short" word size.
The OS used 6-bit character encoding, so ten characters fit into a long word.
This could be a good thing. ... affect the consumer and give a more relevent expeirence.
Except that the only thing that a driver should be "experiencing" is driving safely.
Billboards that are tailored to those driving by will simply distract them more, and possibly lead to more accidents.
This is not a "good thing".
It would be interesting to see if the use of such billboards increases the incidence of accidents in their vicinity.
if copyrights were treated more like physical property, and subjected to a "copyright tax".
Well, the way it is (supposed to be), currently, is that the "tax" is the value of the copyrighted work, and the "payment" is deferred until the copyright expires.
At that point, the work becomes public property, and the original owner loses the copyright.
This is like acquiring title to a piece of land, being able to live on it for a certain number of years without paying taxes, and then having to give up the land in its entirety after a certain number of years.
Silica gel is the most common type of dessicant. That's the little packet labeled "DO NOT EAT" in just about any consumer electronics packaging. I've saved the little packets in a jar for years, but I'm sure you can also buy them directly.
I believe that craft stores sell it to gardeners, who use it to dry cut flowers.
Since the flowers are packed in the gel itself (like hard drives are packed in foam peanuts), rather than just being placed in a container with a packet of the stuff, my guess is that it is sold in bulk, probably in 1-5 lb bags (but I haven't actually bought any myself, so I could be wrong).
And, as another poster mentioned, you can restore the gel by baking it at low temperature.
I think that they should send email out to everybody describing this great service!
It is now ...
You are thinking of Roger Daltry, who was also the backup drummer for the Rolling Stones.
...
He also starred in the movie "Help!", along with the other members of the band: Jenny McArthy, Vladimir Lenin, Harrison Ford, and the "Fifth Stone", Ringo Starr.
Yes, all of the above is BS.
That's why you always back up twice.
The likelyhood of scratches occuring in the same place on both CDs/DVDs is very small.
I have two sets of CD cases sitting next to each other.
The CDs in the second cases are exact copies of the CDs in the first.
And if I had the time money, and inclination, I would make a third copy of each CD and store it off site, say, in a safe deposit box.
Ingredients are so you know what went into your food.
OK, I want to know whether GMOs are in the food that I buy.
I'm a vegetarian, and don't want to consume food that contains animal genes.
For example, I believe that I read once that someone had inserted genes from an animal into a fruit species so that it was more frost-hardy.
(IIRC, it produced an antifreeze.)
I do not wish to each such fruit.
I also do not wish to eat food that contains pesticides, other than those that an unGMOed plant would normally produce by itself through biological means.
These dietary preferences of mine may seem backward or unscientific, but I have the right to eat what I want, and not to eat what I don't want.
I also don't believe that truth-in-labelling should be confined only to GMOs.
Other information should also be listed (e.g., the maximum percentage of vermin droppings in grain ingredients, etc.), and I should be able to make up my own mind whether I want to buy a product, based on the information provided.
Maybe it's because people have a history of overhyping 'bad' products so that people have a fear of them out of proportion to the risks.
That's a pretty poor excuse for suppressing information.
Why include nutrition information?
Why list ingredients at all?
People have a right to know what they put into their bodies, and then to make up their own minds, whether or not their decisions are based on logic or emotions.
Some people have an extreme allergic reaction to a substance in peanuts.
What happens if the gene that makes this substance is transplanted into corn?
(OK, this particular allergen is well known, so it's unlikely that this would happen in this particular case, but there are many, many allergens out there, in many different plants and animals.)
In addition, some people do not eat various types of plants or animals for ethical or religious reasons.
What happens when a pig gene is transplanted into other plants/animals?
no sane food/drug company would risk the impact of such a level of carelessness/unconcern
...
Well, one could state that no sane company would "cook the books" to the tune of over $6bn and not get caught, but
Companies are run by people.
History is replete with examples of less-than-sane people in positions of (economic or political) power.
And in this present era, where quarterly results are more important than long-term results, is it too far a stretch to image that there would be some people who would "cut corners" where safety is concerned?
It is also possible that people can delude themselves into thinking that something is safe, when it actually isn't.
I remember reading, many many years ago, about the president or CEO of a company that was selling pills that contained a radioactive material.
Responding to concerns that ingesting a radioactive substance was unsafe, this person ingested a massive amount of the material, in front of reporters, to show his confidence in the safety of the product.
He died shortly thereafter.
You are incorrect that it's difficult to remove the strip -- try it, it takes only a little bit of effort. It requires intent, though
And, IIRC, intentionally removing the strip is a federal crime.
So don't try it.
The stuff within parentheses ("(...)") was meant to be humorous (i.e., non-factual BS); the stuff without was meant to be serious (i.e., factual non-BS).
(For example, the guy's name wasn't Larry Dopplershift; it was really Laurence Dopplershift.
(That was another joke.))
Uh, 25 base 10 is 27 base 9.
I'm afraid I don't get it....Could someone explain?
If you approach an object, the light it emits appears to you to be at a higher frequency.
(This is called a "Doppler Shift", after Larry Dopplershift, who discovered it while skydiving.)
So if you are approching a red object fast enough, the red light will increase in frequncy relative to your velocity, and appear blue, because blue has a higher frequency than red.
(If you go outside at various times and look at the sky, you will find that the sky is blue more often than it is red.
Therefore, the blue sky occurs more frequently, and thus, by definition, has a higher frequency.
This proves that blue has a higher frequency than red.)
Imagine building the frame of a house in a big tank
But how would you build the tank?
Inside a larger tank?
But then how would you build the larger tank?
etc.
You would have to build the tank using conventional methods.
It seems to me that it would be easier to just build the frame normally.
Just because something is cool, doesn't mean that it should be used for everything.
The only way that I can think of that this method may be useful in homebuilding is for prefab homes (e.g., trailer homes), because once the tank is built, it can be reused.
But even there, it seems to be more trouble than it's worth.
Anchoring or holding things in place is much easier on a planet's surface than in space.
Except that there is this thing called "food" that will replace whatever minerals the water leaches out (provided that the right food is consumed).
Most of the "beneficial" minerals absorbed or expelled from the body come from food, not what's in drinking water.
(There are exceptions, like fluoridated water, but they are not essential for life.)
A person who eats a balanced diet would have no problems surviving by also drinking only pure water.
The war effort drove technological advances that the USA, with it's intact manufacturing base, was able to exploit to dominate the world economy.
And yet, many Americans still don't know when to apostrophize "its", and when not to.
America invented the internet. No, not Al Gore, but Tim Bernstein-Lee and Mark Andreeson created the World Wide Web ...
Erm, Tim Berners-Lee is not an American.
And Marc Andreessen created MOSAIC, the first graphical browser, but did not create the WWW itself.
The article mentions using images (although GIFs, not PNGs).
The problem with bitmapped images is that they do not scale well with the text on the page.
Actually, the technology is over 10 years old.
I remember reading an article in Byte Magazine in the early '80s (before it became crappy), where someone hooked a spinning mirror up to an oscilloscope, producing 3-D vector graphics.
(He had it hooked up to an oscilloscope because graphic CRT displays were not yet available for the average consumer.)
Has she recently acquired a new beach house?
If you decide one day to stop paying your credit card, do you think the bank is going to sequester a grand jury to indict you for... breaking you agreement to pay your minimum monthly balance?
No, but if I charge a purchase to my credit card, and have no intention of paying it back, that's fraud (AFAIK, IANAL, M O U S E), and I should not be surprised by an arrest and indictment.
It depends on intent.
In the case of the credit card, intent is difficult to prove.
In the case of the uncapped modems, it is not.
(Personally, I agree with other posts here that the ISP should be throttling bandwidth on its end.)
Exactly how long would it take to pressurize and depressurize an airlock capable of fitting one of these cars in?
I shouldn't imagine that it would take long, if the airlock were only slightly larger than the car itself.
But you don't have to put the entire car in an airlock; all you have to do is put the airlock around the car doors.
That is, the car would "dock" with the access doors (like the shuttle docks with the ISS), while the car itself remains in a vacuum.
If the doors are closely matched, there will be very little air to evacuate.
(If you have ever been to Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, you will have a good idea of how this could work by checking out the trams that travel between the concourses.
The trams arrive at a station, and several sets of matched doors open to allow egress/ingress.)