I love having my xp cd. I reinstall every few months at least (and now and again a few times in a week) and if I didn't get my cd with my computer I'd go nuts.
On my own computer, and I couldn't access anything from my friend's computer on a modem to my computer on dsl behind a router (NAT), although on my roommate's computer on the LAN I was able to download just the files I'd shared, and they did show up on morpheus, just with no username...
As an introvert, I'd have to say that contests like this, with questions to ask people are not a good idea for some people. Whenever I get run into one of these things I tend to try and leave if at all possible, and if I can't I probably get some sort of horrified look on my face, and look for others with the same look and go and talk to them, because they usually seem to be the easiest to talk to, since they also don't want to have to meet a lot of people, and probably want to just sit down and talk to one person about how they hate this stupid contest. This behaviour can't be changed either, outside of some sort of drugs which are a bad idea unless the personality becomes a fairly significant problem. If you have to hold a party for some reason, I'd suggest a LAN party/XBox/GC/PS2 area, a normal party for the people who want that, and maybe other areas for people who don't like either of those. Also, don't make one group go into another area by placing all the food at the normal party or something. Bad idea. (And btw, UBC rocks)
This is far from their first intelligent move. They've cut taxes, put nurses back to work (they'd already offered them the highest wages in CANADA and the nurses still weren't happy), and, most importantly, gotten rid of the corrupt BC NDP and their horrible financial decisions.
Maybe I'm wrong here, but wasn't the beginning of Evil Dead II from evil dead 1 to explain things to people who hadn't seen evil dead 1 (probably a lot of people who saw 2), and then the rest of it new stuff? Come to think of it, they had to reshoot it because they couldn't get the rights to the footage from evil dead 1 if I'm not mistaken.
I think a good solution to this would be to start a two level approach to linux distributions, one for the current userbase, and an idiot proof version. The level of difference and ability to switch between the two and all other details would have to be worked out of course, but I think that something along these lines would ultimately help linux, without pissing off the current userbase. (Maybe this has been said before?)
If you had a CD of anything in Afghanistan right now they would be pretty pissed. As I recall, having any computer equipment in the country right now is a no no, which is why the UN had to pull out. (all it's equipment was seized) (sorry if I'm mixing up the UN with some aid group or something, blame it on memory loss due to bzzr)
Does this mean that if I wanted to do my physics thesis in quantum computing that I could be prosecuted for it? As I recall there's a nice algorithm already out there to factor large primes using them, and if the guys working in the basement of the building here continue their work they could be in big trouble.
Come to think of it now, if we had music coming out now with the same level of innovation as my parent's generation had back in the day, I'm sure we'd probably be seeing an increase in profits for the RIAA the likes of which have never been seen before...
Imagine someone like Hendrix, Led Zep, or came around today, rather than a bunch of morons trying to sell us the, as the author put it "backdoor boys". This said, there are some good bands out there today, I'm not saying everyone new sucks, however, if I turn on a radio station which plays newer music here in Vancouver, BC, it's very rare that I'll really like the song. When was the last time people went nuts over a new band that wasn't full of really attractive guys/girls. Again, not that looks mean anything at all to music, but then, that was my point exactly...
Sorry for the incoherence, it's been a long day...
Maybe this is just me being wrong as I usually am on any kind of psychological or social matter, but it seems to me at the time that most every problem I solve in my math/physics problems in university right now are pretty much done by trial and error. Sure, I have an intuition as to how I may go about solving a problem as soon as I hear it assuming I know what the question means but isn't that simply because I've had so much experience in solving problems... I suppose what I'm really asking is; Isn't every problem we solve (be it a question requiring memory searching or logical deductions or whatever) simply a matter of having the pathways in your brain built up so that you can relate it to something you already know to solve as much as possible, and then using trial and error to solve the rest of it? Exactly how would you solve any problem if you didn't use trial and error? I'd suggest that anything we humans have built, and even anything that some might say nature has been able to construct is "trial and error", as we say...
From dictionary.com;
learning
1.The act, process, or experience of gaining knowledge or skill.
2.Knowledge or skill gained through schooling or study. See Synonyms at knowledge.
3.Psychology. Behavioral modification especially through experience or conditioning.
In other words, contrary to your "this isn't learning" line, I would contest in fact that, this is EXACTLY learning, in every sense of the word.
Why should we confine the concept of "life" to our terms? Just because we have some form of conciousness and physical form doesn't mean that there aren't "universes" in which things are so vastly different that there is no connection whatsoever between our universe and that one... (ie: one cannot even consider what the other would look like) (note: I used quotations about that universes there because right there, I dont mean universe in the traditional physical sense of our universe, I mean any state of existence that can or cannot be visualized by a human, or in which any mathematics that we take as "obvious" holds...)
1. it should be possible to divert it with a chain of precisely launched nuclear warheads detonated as closely as possible to it
This is about the worst thing you could possibly do... This would cause the asteroid to break up and we would be killed by thousands of small asteroids instead of one big one... The workaround however, is to use something like an ion propulsion system running on solar power over a very long period of time... (requires knowledge of the impending impact many many months in advance)
6.It's only bad where the death of an individual counts, which only applies to people, anyway.
I can hear PETA fans screaming bloody murder.:)
10.It's still -nothing- like the 95% extinction mentioned above
I think the larger issue here is that if the wrong plant/animal goes, it may set off some sort of chain reaction, causing large amounts of the species of earth to die off... Whether or not it would affect us is anyone's guess. As a side note, a method of preventing this (and other problems) is to try and get people to stop reproducing... Not forcibly or anything, I just think that promoting birth control of any sort (for you church-goers chastity is just as good as any of the others as long as _some_ people actually go along with it) and trying to convince people to stop mating would be good. It would at least slow down the rate at which we move into other areas and kill off species to make room for us to live in. It won't happen anytime soon, but it would be quite beneficial to slow down the population growth until we know more about our effects on the earth and can find other planets to colonize and so on...
11. Genetic engineering could never hurt the environment; ultimately it could only help it by introducing more expressive traits to me commingled in the great evolutionary dance.
Genetic engineering could lead to certain species all having a single trait in common that was cause by GE and causing the entire species to become extinct from one virus that they couldn't defend. However, as long as GE is conducted by people who are not idiots and who actually have an inkling of how to consider what you're doing will effect the world, we shouldn't have to worry too much about this... The bigger threat is from Ebola and friends becoming airborne on their own...
13. Nanotech disaster. F*ck fire or ice, that's the way I would want to go!
Gotta agree with you here. Nanotech has the potential of eliminating the need for GE, and we might with this be able to advance humans and so on incredibly quickly... It could lead to an explosion in the complexity of life on earth, and foster intellectual growth faster than has ever been possible before...
17. Mass Insanity
Again, I agree... What the heck is this doing on the list? Is this some sort of joke?
18. Alien Invasion
Based on the fact that we haven't seen much out of SETI yet, I'd say that one of three things is true; We're in for an invasion soon; Life is exceedingly rare in our universe; The Communication forms that we use either don't occur to most advanced species, or we've missed some sort of transmission method as of yet that is FAR better than our current technologies.
19.Divine Intervention
I'll also not touch this except to say that I think all these religious people are looking for meaning where there may be none...
20. It's all a dream.
This is an interesting idea I've thought about before... Unfortunuately, there's not really much you can say about it without making assumptions that simply cant be justified.
Not to mention the fact that every irrational number can be expressed as an infinite sum of rational numbers.
Actually, not every number can be expressed as an infinite sum of rational numbers... The probability that a random algorithm will halt for example is irrational, as well as being incomputable... (Just ask Noam Elkies of Harvard)...
Most of the criticism of RedHat seems to be coming from college students with a selective dislike for what they see as large, successful businesses. I say "selective" because these same critics also fawn all over corporately produced mass market products, like Mountain Dew, The Simpsons, and anything Star Wars related.
I gotta say that although I'd love to disagree with all this and take some sort of college student highroad like I normally would try before being shot down by someone who has lived in the real world, I just can't. The fact is, one of the main problems with big business is that there are those people in power with questionable ethical standards who try and stiffle legitimate good new ideas simply because it might bring in less revenue for them. ie: LA used to have a great electric rail system, until GM, Firestone, and a number of other companies banded together and formed a front company that destroyed thousands of electric rail cars after buying the systems, in anticipation of gasoline powered busses.(actually they were all found guilty of violating anti trust laws but were subsequently fined only 5000$ per company and 1$ per exec involved) Or, Microsoft for example. (you all know all about them so I wont bother explaning why I think they have the potential to suck) Essentially however, the problem with this is that in their efforts to be a good business and make lots of money, they sometimes sacrifice, subdue, or outright try and stop fresh new ideas that would in effect be far better for the consumer or society or whoever you want... So, while big business ain't that bad in itself, it's the execs who make it hard for people with better ideas to make it big that suck.
>This creates varying gravitational potentials which change depending on the positions of all the parties involved (Gravity is dependent on 1/r^2)
It really obeys General Relativity or if you want to be really accurate, it probably obeys some sort of quantized GR... But then you could still not quite be satisfied with this and say that it obeys some physical theory we wont see for 100 years(or ever), but effectively GR is probably about as accurate as you want (or need) for this case. Again, the problem is calculating trajectories of all of those things moving around up there and the more accurate the theory, the more time spent computing... If you want to see something NASA has up on their website that calculates trajectories for a number of satellites currently out there, take a look at http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/RealTi me/ JPass/
It's actually pretty cool if you get a chance to look at it... Be sure to take a look at J-Track 3D
I might add that there are lots of smaller objects up there, hurtling around at ridiculous speeds that can add to problems that any satellite could have. Imagine a screw went thru your car going at 20,000 km/s. (Although this last bit I'm not so sure of... I think I've been told this before but I'd be interested to see someone who actually knew anything about this post...)
Since an electron can *supposedly* carry an infinite amount of information, wouldn't this imply that space is infinite in the microscopic level, and so that no matter what size we get down to, space never breaks down? (ie: you could "zoom in" as much as you liked and still get an image, so to speak")
Maybe I should be studying my quantum mechanics instead of wasting time on/.
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I love having my xp cd. I reinstall every few months at least (and now and again a few times in a week) and if I didn't get my cd with my computer I'd go nuts.
As an introvert, I'd have to say that contests like this, with questions to ask people are not a good idea for some people. Whenever I get run into one of these things I tend to try and leave if at all possible, and if I can't I probably get some sort of horrified look on my face, and look for others with the same look and go and talk to them, because they usually seem to be the easiest to talk to, since they also don't want to have to meet a lot of people, and probably want to just sit down and talk to one person about how they hate this stupid contest. This behaviour can't be changed either, outside of some sort of drugs which are a bad idea unless the personality becomes a fairly significant problem. If you have to hold a party for some reason, I'd suggest a LAN party/XBox/GC/PS2 area, a normal party for the people who want that, and maybe other areas for people who don't like either of those. Also, don't make one group go into another area by placing all the food at the normal party or something. Bad idea. (And btw, UBC rocks)
This is far from their first intelligent move. They've cut taxes, put nurses back to work (they'd already offered them the highest wages in CANADA and the nurses still weren't happy), and, most importantly, gotten rid of the corrupt BC NDP and their horrible financial decisions.
Maybe I'm wrong here, but wasn't the beginning of Evil Dead II from evil dead 1 to explain things to people who hadn't seen evil dead 1 (probably a lot of people who saw 2), and then the rest of it new stuff? Come to think of it, they had to reshoot it because they couldn't get the rights to the footage from evil dead 1 if I'm not mistaken.
I think a good solution to this would be to start a two level approach to linux distributions, one for the current userbase, and an idiot proof version. The level of difference and ability to switch between the two and all other details would have to be worked out of course, but I think that something along these lines would ultimately help linux, without pissing off the current userbase. (Maybe this has been said before?)
If you had a CD of anything in Afghanistan right now they would be pretty pissed. As I recall, having any computer equipment in the country right now is a no no, which is why the UN had to pull out. (all it's equipment was seized) (sorry if I'm mixing up the UN with some aid group or something, blame it on memory loss due to bzzr)
Does this mean that if I wanted to do my physics thesis in quantum computing that I could be prosecuted for it? As I recall there's a nice algorithm already out there to factor large primes using them, and if the guys working in the basement of the building here continue their work they could be in big trouble.
Imagine someone like Hendrix, Led Zep, or came around today, rather than a bunch of morons trying to sell us the, as the author put it "backdoor boys". This said, there are some good bands out there today, I'm not saying everyone new sucks, however, if I turn on a radio station which plays newer music here in Vancouver, BC, it's very rare that I'll really like the song. When was the last time people went nuts over a new band that wasn't full of really attractive guys/girls. Again, not that looks mean anything at all to music, but then, that was my point exactly...
Sorry for the incoherence, it's been a long day...
From dictionary.com;
learning 1.The act, process, or experience of gaining knowledge or skill. 2.Knowledge or skill gained through schooling or study. See Synonyms at knowledge. 3.Psychology. Behavioral modification especially through experience or conditioning.
In other words, contrary to your "this isn't learning" line, I would contest in fact that, this is EXACTLY learning, in every sense of the word.
This is about the worst thing you could possibly do... This would cause the asteroid to break up and we would be killed by thousands of small asteroids instead of one big one... The workaround however, is to use something like an ion propulsion system running on solar power over a very long period of time... (requires knowledge of the impending impact many many months in advance)
6.It's only bad where the death of an individual counts, which only applies to people, anyway.
I can hear PETA fans screaming bloody murder. :)
10.It's still -nothing- like the 95% extinction mentioned above
I think the larger issue here is that if the wrong plant/animal goes, it may set off some sort of chain reaction, causing large amounts of the species of earth to die off... Whether or not it would affect us is anyone's guess. As a side note, a method of preventing this (and other problems) is to try and get people to stop reproducing... Not forcibly or anything, I just think that promoting birth control of any sort (for you church-goers chastity is just as good as any of the others as long as _some_ people actually go along with it) and trying to convince people to stop mating would be good. It would at least slow down the rate at which we move into other areas and kill off species to make room for us to live in. It won't happen anytime soon, but it would be quite beneficial to slow down the population growth until we know more about our effects on the earth and can find other planets to colonize and so on...
11. Genetic engineering could never hurt the environment; ultimately it could only help it by introducing more expressive traits to me commingled in the great evolutionary dance.
Genetic engineering could lead to certain species all having a single trait in common that was cause by GE and causing the entire species to become extinct from one virus that they couldn't defend. However, as long as GE is conducted by people who are not idiots and who actually have an inkling of how to consider what you're doing will effect the world, we shouldn't have to worry too much about this... The bigger threat is from Ebola and friends becoming airborne on their own...
13. Nanotech disaster. F*ck fire or ice, that's the way I would want to go!
Gotta agree with you here. Nanotech has the potential of eliminating the need for GE, and we might with this be able to advance humans and so on incredibly quickly... It could lead to an explosion in the complexity of life on earth, and foster intellectual growth faster than has ever been possible before...
17. Mass Insanity
Again, I agree... What the heck is this doing on the list? Is this some sort of joke?
18. Alien Invasion
Based on the fact that we haven't seen much out of SETI yet, I'd say that one of three things is true; We're in for an invasion soon; Life is exceedingly rare in our universe; The Communication forms that we use either don't occur to most advanced species, or we've missed some sort of transmission method as of yet that is FAR better than our current technologies.
19.Divine Intervention
I'll also not touch this except to say that I think all these religious people are looking for meaning where there may be none...
20. It's all a dream.
This is an interesting idea I've thought about before... Unfortunuately, there's not really much you can say about it without making assumptions that simply cant be justified.
Actually, not every number can be expressed as an infinite sum of rational numbers... The probability that a random algorithm will halt for example is irrational, as well as being incomputable... (Just ask Noam Elkies of Harvard)...
I gotta say that although I'd love to disagree with all this and take some sort of college student highroad like I normally would try before being shot down by someone who has lived in the real world, I just can't. The fact is, one of the main problems with big business is that there are those people in power with questionable ethical standards who try and stiffle legitimate good new ideas simply because it might bring in less revenue for them. ie: LA used to have a great electric rail system, until GM, Firestone, and a number of other companies banded together and formed a front company that destroyed thousands of electric rail cars after buying the systems, in anticipation of gasoline powered busses.(actually they were all found guilty of violating anti trust laws but were subsequently fined only 5000$ per company and 1$ per exec involved) Or, Microsoft for example. (you all know all about them so I wont bother explaning why I think they have the potential to suck) Essentially however, the problem with this is that in their efforts to be a good business and make lots of money, they sometimes sacrifice, subdue, or outright try and stop fresh new ideas that would in effect be far better for the consumer or society or whoever you want... So, while big business ain't that bad in itself, it's the execs who make it hard for people with better ideas to make it big that suck.
I was just curious if you could name one case of parents being brought up on child abuse charges, or children suing parents for spanking *alone*...
It really obeys General Relativity or if you want to be really accurate, it probably obeys some sort of quantized GR... But then you could still not quite be satisfied with this and say that it obeys some physical theory we wont see for 100 years(or ever), but effectively GR is probably about as accurate as you want (or need) for this case. Again, the problem is calculating trajectories of all of those things moving around up there and the more accurate the theory, the more time spent computing... If you want to see something NASA has up on their website that calculates trajectories for a number of satellites currently out there, take a look at http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/RealTi me/ JPass/
It's actually pretty cool if you get a chance to look at it... Be sure to take a look at J-Track 3D
I might add that there are lots of smaller objects up there, hurtling around at ridiculous speeds that can add to problems that any satellite could have. Imagine a screw went thru your car going at 20,000 km/s. (Although this last bit I'm not so sure of... I think I've been told this before but I'd be interested to see someone who actually knew anything about this post...)
Since an electron can *supposedly* carry an infinite amount of information, wouldn't this imply that space is infinite in the microscopic level, and so that no matter what size we get down to, space never breaks down? (ie: you could "zoom in" as much as you liked and still get an image, so to speak") Maybe I should be studying my quantum mechanics instead of wasting time on /.