He's saying that TI could put together a calculator with the computing and display technology of a gameboy and the keyboard of a traditional graphing calculator. He's not saying that a gameboy provides all of the functionality of a graphing calculator.
Hussein deserved to be taken out of power, there's no doubt about that, but I just don't think he was a pressing concern. I seriously doubt that Saddam would have attacked the US if he did have the weapons. Saddam was a secular leader and I don't think he was ever interested in a jihad against the US. I think the only scenario where Saddam might have attacked the US would be if he built his army back up and developed bioweapons then attacked his neighbors again and threatened the US with the bioweapons if we intervened.
I think that the real reason for the Iraq war was to test the domino theory that some conservative pundits were tossing around. They were hoping that a democracy in Iraq would lead to revolutions in neighboring states. If it worked, it would solve a lot of our problems. But it never had a chance of working in the first place.
Well, I decided not to comment on silicon et al., because I didn't want to get in over my head and I was fairly sure I could safely dismiss the possibility. Anyway, I did a little reading after seeing your reply and the reply to your reply so now I'm ready to get in over my head.
For carbon to form a double bond and two single bonds it has to be hybridized to have 3 sp^2 orbitals and one p orbital. The sp^2 orbitals are 120 degrees apart and lie in the same plane. The leftover p orbital has two lobes with the lobes extending in opposite directions perpendicular to the plane. To form a double bond, you have to pair an sp^2 orbital with another sp^2 orbital and then pair the p orbital with another p so that both p's are parallel to eachother and they overlap. The strength of the bond between the p's is determined by how much they overlap.
Even in carbon to carbon double bonds the bond between the p's is much weaker than the sp^2 bond. Since silicon atoms are larger, the p orbitals are further apart there is no overlap between the relatively dense portions of the p orbitals. However, orbitals don't have any boundaries so there is always at least some thin overlap. For silicon this overlap is thin enough that a bond between the p orbitals will be extremely weak. Pretty much anything will break it so it's not something that can exist outside of a highly contrived experiment, and then only for a short time.
As you go down the periodic table, that bond would get weaker and weaker. You'd have trouble even contriving a germanium to germanium double bond and tin would be even worse.
Even without this, I wouldn't count on life based on anything heavier than silicon simply due to the fact that throughout the universe, heavier elements are vastly less common than lighter elements. The distribution of elements can be lumpy locally, but since only roughly 3 out of every billion atoms is a germanium atom I wouldn't count on it being lumpy enough for a germanium based ecosystem to exist.
Basically, all forms of life will either have to use carbon or something else so off the wall that the possibility would never occur to us.
The question is whether or not the difference between the work of a game coder and the work of a graphic artist is a relevent distinction. What is it that makes software special? Why should the creators of some forms of content be allowed to place restrictions on the copying of their work when others shouldn't?
I respect Stallman, but not as a philosopher (as an aside, I don't respect Raymond at all). His insistence on constraining or altering the meanings of words and phrases in ways that are inconsistent with present and historical usage is a source of many problems. Saying that GPLed software is free as in speech is misleading since I've never known free speech to mean anything other than any form of expression with no restrictions placed upon its content. As the law stands, the only restrictions on the content of software are those imposed by patent and copyright law, and both of these apply to all software regardless of license. If we take free to mean unrestricted, only uncopyrighted software could be considered free. In order to realize Stallman's vision of a world where all software is "free" we would have to restrict people's rights to form certain kinds of contracts. It's not often listed alongside free speech et al. but I consider the freedom to form contracts to be a very important component of our society.
I like the GPL, but that's because I like the idea that an author who wishes to share his or her work can see to it that he or she will always be able to take advantage of any improvements made by others. It's a license with extremely generous terms but with relatively minor restrictions that work to encourage others to share their work as well.
That is old news, but I believe the point here is that this is another example of bacteria surviving in an environment that we would expect to interfere with any system as complex as a living being. In the search for life outside of Earth, many people are focusing on finding places with earthlike conditions. However, it may be that we can't dismiss the possibility of any planet having some form of life based on its chemical composition alone.
At the moment, the only safe assumption is that any environment without a significant amount of carbon probably can't have life. Of course, this assumption could prove false, but it would be a surprise since carbon's hybridized orbitals allows for compounds with structural complexity that can't be reproduced without it. Aside from that, I'd say all bets are off. Life could be just about anywhere.
For many of these games, any character would do, but Nintendo has no reason to introduce a new star character for each new game series they make. If you take Mario out of Mario Kart, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Mario Party, and anything else, you'll end up with games that still need to have some character associated with them. Why would they want to introduce new heroes and heroines for games without storylines?
The fact is, these games that everyone is complaining about, aren't the best games ever made, but they are in their own way one of Nintendo's strengths. Beginning with the original Mario Kart, Nintendo has been developing lines of games with simplified mechanics that groups of people can play. These games are simple, accessible and yet still fun. They're something you can play with just about any group of people.
The one-click patent was pretty damn goofy, but they haven't done anything to really irk me since then. And they only really got it to irritate Barnes and Noble in the first place.
It's been too long, and I've lost my indignation. I can't find it anywhere, even after I try to retrace my steps. Until I can find it, I'll cut Amazon a bit of slack.
No, I just realized what he's saying. Ok, suppose the ice caps melt. This means that the weight on top of the oceanic plates will increase. These plates press down on the magma underneath them, squeezing the magma towards the continental plates, pushing them up.
This is, of course, assuming that magma is an incompressible fluid and that the change in weight distribution won't change the difference between the rate at which magma is created and the rate at which magma escapes.
Saying that the continents will bob up as the water level rises really conjures up inaccurrate imagery, but it isn't all that different from what would happen if you removed the oceanic plates and replaced the water and magma with a single liquid.
Gates is in fact playing both sides of the table and donates to both the Republican party and the Democratic party. This is common practice in the business world.
The dollar is weak right now. Sony will adjust the price to specific markets as necessary so taking the price from another market and converting it to dollars isn't really a valid approach for guessing the US retail price.
The thing is, none of the interpretations make any testable predictions. Ultimately, some of the interpretations make more sense than others and it's easier to explain certain phenomena such as quantum computing ins ome of the interpretations, but there is nothing that can actually prove any of them to be the One True Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.
That said, there's no real reason to assign any magic properties to the act of measurement. A measurement is just an interaction between a quantum system and something external to that system and by the postulates of quantum mechanics, measurements must also be reversible (though as Grover said, it would be difficult to reverse a measurement once a photon carrying the information has reached someone's eye).
As Feynman may or may not have said, "Shut up and calculate!"
The massive amount of risk associated with an investment of this nature vastly outweighs the rather limited potential gain. Project Entropia isn't even on the map as MMORPGs go so he's got an extremely limited market. If anything happens to the company that runs Project Entropia he loses his investment. Project Entropia is effectively a bank, except without all of the protective regulations. I hope they're mimicing the procedures of banks and keeping some fixed percentage of deposits on hand. That percentage needs to be higher than the current required reserve ratio since things are likely to be more volatile here than for a real bank (i.e. a massive wave of withdrawals could be triggered fairly easily).
Maintaining a fixed exchange rate seems like they're asking for trouble given that virtual economies are prone to inflation. If there is a significant amount of inflation, there will be a lot of withdrawals rather quickly and the company will likely bust. It only takes one bug to imbalance a game's economy.
I suspect the system will eventually reach equilibrium and the number of new Linux distros created per minute will equal the number of distros that disappear from the face of the earth per minute.
This is a very good point and reflects the feelings I've had about file sharing for some time. While it's inaccurate to say that there is no loss incurred by file sharing, this loss is still vastly overstated by the recording industry.
Sharing music files without the permission of the owner is copyright infringement and it does incur some loss so it is wrong on some level. But then, it's a pretty feeble crime. File sharing causes me about as much moral outrage as someone (possibly myself) taking an unreasonable number of matchbooks from a restaurant. I'm not going anywhere with this analogy I just thought it was vaguely amusing.
I'd say that the total social cost of enforcing any sort of any total or partial file sharing ban would be greater than the relatively small benefit to the recording industry.
After the Compaq merger I kind of want to see how bad things will get. I'd like to see what they could do if they get really serious about ruining the company. Maybe they could merge with AOL Time Warner.
Albion: Heretic-Basically an evil Cleric. Except they don't get to wear chain mail, or even leather armor and they don't get any strong heals. They do get the ability to resurrect their allies as monsters for a brief time. Most of their damage spells require that they stand still for an extended period of time so some people are predicting that they will be ineffective in fighting against the other realms.
Hibernia: Bainshee-Female only caster with spells that can damage all enemies in a cone shaped area in front of them. They also are the only class with a special appearance. They actually look like ghosts. Vampiir-Leather wearing hybrid tank that uses a piercing weapon and makes their other hand into a magical claw. They can only gain power for casting their spells when in melee combat and they quickly lose power when combat ends. They can climb the walls of keeps, but they do not get stealth like other classes with this ability. They also cannot have "buff" spells cast on them by allies but as they level their stats increase very quickly and at level 50 their stats are only slightly lower than those of anyone with full buffs.
Midgard: Valkyrie-Female only hybrid tank that also gets some cone area effect spells like the Bainshee. They can use a sword and shield or a spear and they get special styles not available to other classes with these weapons. Warlock-Unusual caster with very long casting times that can "chamber" a certain number of spells in advance to cast them quickly later. They can also change the properties of their spells by mixing them with a secondary spell.
Albion only gets one expansion class since at the release of the game they had two more classes than Midgard and one more than Hibernia. The spelling is correct on the Hibernian classes.
Vampiir is expected to be the early "flavor of the month" class, which is fine by me since Hibernia has a lower population than the other realms on many servers. Warlock and Bainshee are expected to be overpowered once people figure out how to use them so in the long run they stand a good chance of being "nerfed" until they are underpowered.
This expansion also adds instanced dungeons (i.e. the server can generate a private dungeon for you and your group with monsters of a suitable level) and more detailed options for your characters appearance. When you first log in you can adjust the appearances of any of your existing characters.
You need to have the Shrouded Isles and Trials of Atlantis expansions to install this expansion. Shrouded Isles can now be downloaded for free or ordered for the cost of shipping (in fact, the original client with no expansions installed cannot be used any more). You should be able to find DAOC Platinum edition which includes an account and the first two expansions for $20-30. You can also get a free trial (well, if you can download the client anyway, otherwise it'll be the cost of shipping).
DAOC is a great game and the RvR combat is great though currently their are too many people playing casters and archers. That should get corrected once Mythic gives melee classes more to do than just run siege engines when taking or defending a keep. But for now, if you really want you can just be part of the problem and play a caster or archer. If you do start playing DAOC, play an underpopulated realm. You'll get bonuses that will help you get to level 50 much faster and the most heavily populated servers have their own problems. If you come to Hibernia on the Bedevere server, send a message to Eponnenain and I'll set you up with some gear to get you started.
Slashdot Mirror
First and foremost, economists are bad at economics. This is irrefutable fact.
He's saying that TI could put together a calculator with the computing and display technology of a gameboy and the keyboard of a traditional graphing calculator. He's not saying that a gameboy provides all of the functionality of a graphing calculator.
And so long as the students and faculty involved couldn't be more productive doing something else.
Hussein deserved to be taken out of power, there's no doubt about that, but I just don't think he was a pressing concern. I seriously doubt that Saddam would have attacked the US if he did have the weapons. Saddam was a secular leader and I don't think he was ever interested in a jihad against the US. I think the only scenario where Saddam might have attacked the US would be if he built his army back up and developed bioweapons then attacked his neighbors again and threatened the US with the bioweapons if we intervened.
I think that the real reason for the Iraq war was to test the domino theory that some conservative pundits were tossing around. They were hoping that a democracy in Iraq would lead to revolutions in neighboring states. If it worked, it would solve a lot of our problems. But it never had a chance of working in the first place.
Well, I decided not to comment on silicon et al., because I didn't want to get in over my head and I was fairly sure I could safely dismiss the possibility. Anyway, I did a little reading after seeing your reply and the reply to your reply so now I'm ready to get in over my head.
For carbon to form a double bond and two single bonds it has to be hybridized to have 3 sp^2 orbitals and one p orbital. The sp^2 orbitals are 120 degrees apart and lie in the same plane. The leftover p orbital has two lobes with the lobes extending in opposite directions perpendicular to the plane. To form a double bond, you have to pair an sp^2 orbital with another sp^2 orbital and then pair the p orbital with another p so that both p's are parallel to eachother and they overlap. The strength of the bond between the p's is determined by how much they overlap.
Even in carbon to carbon double bonds the bond between the p's is much weaker than the sp^2 bond. Since silicon atoms are larger, the p orbitals are further apart there is no overlap between the relatively dense portions of the p orbitals. However, orbitals don't have any boundaries so there is always at least some thin overlap. For silicon this overlap is thin enough that a bond between the p orbitals will be extremely weak. Pretty much anything will break it so it's not something that can exist outside of a highly contrived experiment, and then only for a short time.
As you go down the periodic table, that bond would get weaker and weaker. You'd have trouble even contriving a germanium to germanium double bond and tin would be even worse.
Even without this, I wouldn't count on life based on anything heavier than silicon simply due to the fact that throughout the universe, heavier elements are vastly less common than lighter elements. The distribution of elements can be lumpy locally, but since only roughly 3 out of every billion atoms is a germanium atom I wouldn't count on it being lumpy enough for a germanium based ecosystem to exist.
Basically, all forms of life will either have to use carbon or something else so off the wall that the possibility would never occur to us.
The question is whether or not the difference between the work of a game coder and the work of a graphic artist is a relevent distinction. What is it that makes software special? Why should the creators of some forms of content be allowed to place restrictions on the copying of their work when others shouldn't?
I respect Stallman, but not as a philosopher (as an aside, I don't respect Raymond at all). His insistence on constraining or altering the meanings of words and phrases in ways that are inconsistent with present and historical usage is a source of many problems. Saying that GPLed software is free as in speech is misleading since I've never known free speech to mean anything other than any form of expression with no restrictions placed upon its content. As the law stands, the only restrictions on the content of software are those imposed by patent and copyright law, and both of these apply to all software regardless of license. If we take free to mean unrestricted, only uncopyrighted software could be considered free. In order to realize Stallman's vision of a world where all software is "free" we would have to restrict people's rights to form certain kinds of contracts. It's not often listed alongside free speech et al. but I consider the freedom to form contracts to be a very important component of our society.
I like the GPL, but that's because I like the idea that an author who wishes to share his or her work can see to it that he or she will always be able to take advantage of any improvements made by others. It's a license with extremely generous terms but with relatively minor restrictions that work to encourage others to share their work as well.
Well, that's what I think anyway.
That is old news, but I believe the point here is that this is another example of bacteria surviving in an environment that we would expect to interfere with any system as complex as a living being. In the search for life outside of Earth, many people are focusing on finding places with earthlike conditions. However, it may be that we can't dismiss the possibility of any planet having some form of life based on its chemical composition alone.
At the moment, the only safe assumption is that any environment without a significant amount of carbon probably can't have life. Of course, this assumption could prove false, but it would be a surprise since carbon's hybridized orbitals allows for compounds with structural complexity that can't be reproduced without it. Aside from that, I'd say all bets are off. Life could be just about anywhere.
I think I'll expand on your point for you.
For many of these games, any character would do, but Nintendo has no reason to introduce a new star character for each new game series they make. If you take Mario out of Mario Kart, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Mario Party, and anything else, you'll end up with games that still need to have some character associated with them. Why would they want to introduce new heroes and heroines for games without storylines?
The fact is, these games that everyone is complaining about, aren't the best games ever made, but they are in their own way one of Nintendo's strengths. Beginning with the original Mario Kart, Nintendo has been developing lines of games with simplified mechanics that groups of people can play. These games are simple, accessible and yet still fun. They're something you can play with just about any group of people.
Yeah, it is whoring, but personally, I think it's at least amusing whoring. I may take a look at this.
The one-click patent was pretty damn goofy, but they haven't done anything to really irk me since then. And they only really got it to irritate Barnes and Noble in the first place.
It's been too long, and I've lost my indignation. I can't find it anywhere, even after I try to retrace my steps. Until I can find it, I'll cut Amazon a bit of slack.
No, I just realized what he's saying. Ok, suppose the ice caps melt. This means that the weight on top of the oceanic plates will increase. These plates press down on the magma underneath them, squeezing the magma towards the continental plates, pushing them up.
This is, of course, assuming that magma is an incompressible fluid and that the change in weight distribution won't change the difference between the rate at which magma is created and the rate at which magma escapes.
Saying that the continents will bob up as the water level rises really conjures up inaccurrate imagery, but it isn't all that different from what would happen if you removed the oceanic plates and replaced the water and magma with a single liquid.
I suspect that development on that fizzled when they suddenly realized how stupid the name Bitboys Glaze3D was.
Gates is in fact playing both sides of the table and donates to both the Republican party and the Democratic party. This is common practice in the business world.
I think that they view the 50% or more surcharge for Europeans as being a neccessary adjustment.
The dollar is weak right now. Sony will adjust the price to specific markets as necessary so taking the price from another market and converting it to dollars isn't really a valid approach for guessing the US retail price.
$186 is still a tad steep for a handheld though.
The thing is, none of the interpretations make any testable predictions. Ultimately, some of the interpretations make more sense than others and it's easier to explain certain phenomena such as quantum computing ins ome of the interpretations, but there is nothing that can actually prove any of them to be the One True Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.
That said, there's no real reason to assign any magic properties to the act of measurement. A measurement is just an interaction between a quantum system and something external to that system and by the postulates of quantum mechanics, measurements must also be reversible (though as Grover said, it would be difficult to reverse a measurement once a photon carrying the information has reached someone's eye).
As Feynman may or may not have said, "Shut up and calculate!"
Yeah, that might work, but then again he might just end up with deformed bones if he actually lives long enough for his bones to harden.
The massive amount of risk associated with an investment of this nature vastly outweighs the rather limited potential gain. Project Entropia isn't even on the map as MMORPGs go so he's got an extremely limited market. If anything happens to the company that runs Project Entropia he loses his investment. Project Entropia is effectively a bank, except without all of the protective regulations. I hope they're mimicing the procedures of banks and keeping some fixed percentage of deposits on hand. That percentage needs to be higher than the current required reserve ratio since things are likely to be more volatile here than for a real bank (i.e. a massive wave of withdrawals could be triggered fairly easily).
Maintaining a fixed exchange rate seems like they're asking for trouble given that virtual economies are prone to inflation. If there is a significant amount of inflation, there will be a lot of withdrawals rather quickly and the company will likely bust. It only takes one bug to imbalance a game's economy.
It wouldn't be the first time that a name is inaccurate.
I suspect the system will eventually reach equilibrium and the number of new Linux distros created per minute will equal the number of distros that disappear from the face of the earth per minute.
This is a very good point and reflects the feelings I've had about file sharing for some time. While it's inaccurate to say that there is no loss incurred by file sharing, this loss is still vastly overstated by the recording industry.
Sharing music files without the permission of the owner is copyright infringement and it does incur some loss so it is wrong on some level. But then, it's a pretty feeble crime. File sharing causes me about as much moral outrage as someone (possibly myself) taking an unreasonable number of matchbooks from a restaurant. I'm not going anywhere with this analogy I just thought it was vaguely amusing.
I'd say that the total social cost of enforcing any sort of any total or partial file sharing ban would be greater than the relatively small benefit to the recording industry.
He can consult with the Pope too.
After the Compaq merger I kind of want to see how bad things will get. I'd like to see what they could do if they get really serious about ruining the company. Maybe they could merge with AOL Time Warner.
Albion:
Heretic-Basically an evil Cleric. Except they don't get to wear chain mail, or even leather armor and they don't get any strong heals. They do get the ability to resurrect their allies as monsters for a brief time. Most of their damage spells require that they stand still for an extended period of time so some people are predicting that they will be ineffective in fighting against the other realms.
Hibernia:
Bainshee-Female only caster with spells that can damage all enemies in a cone shaped area in front of them. They also are the only class with a special appearance. They actually look like ghosts.
Vampiir-Leather wearing hybrid tank that uses a piercing weapon and makes their other hand into a magical claw. They can only gain power for casting their spells when in melee combat and they quickly lose power when combat ends. They can climb the walls of keeps, but they do not get stealth like other classes with this ability. They also cannot have "buff" spells cast on them by allies but as they level their stats increase very quickly and at level 50 their stats are only slightly lower than those of anyone with full buffs.
Midgard:
Valkyrie-Female only hybrid tank that also gets some cone area effect spells like the Bainshee. They can use a sword and shield or a spear and they get special styles not available to other classes with these weapons.
Warlock-Unusual caster with very long casting times that can "chamber" a certain number of spells in advance to cast them quickly later. They can also change the properties of their spells by mixing them with a secondary spell.
Albion only gets one expansion class since at the release of the game they had two more classes than Midgard and one more than Hibernia. The spelling is correct on the Hibernian classes.
Vampiir is expected to be the early "flavor of the month" class, which is fine by me since Hibernia has a lower population than the other realms on many servers. Warlock and Bainshee are expected to be overpowered once people figure out how to use them so in the long run they stand a good chance of being "nerfed" until they are underpowered.
This expansion also adds instanced dungeons (i.e. the server can generate a private dungeon for you and your group with monsters of a suitable level) and more detailed options for your characters appearance. When you first log in you can adjust the appearances of any of your existing characters.
You need to have the Shrouded Isles and Trials of Atlantis expansions to install this expansion. Shrouded Isles can now be downloaded for free or ordered for the cost of shipping (in fact, the original client with no expansions installed cannot be used any more). You should be able to find DAOC Platinum edition which includes an account and the first two expansions for $20-30. You can also get a free trial (well, if you can download the client anyway, otherwise it'll be the cost of shipping).
DAOC is a great game and the RvR combat is great though currently their are too many people playing casters and archers. That should get corrected once Mythic gives melee classes more to do than just run siege engines when taking or defending a keep. But for now, if you really want you can just be part of the problem and play a caster or archer. If you do start playing DAOC, play an underpopulated realm. You'll get bonuses that will help you get to level 50 much faster and the most heavily populated servers have their own problems. If you come to Hibernia on the Bedevere server, send a message to Eponnenain and I'll set you up with some gear to get you started.
Oh well. My memory is unreliable at best.