Howie, you read my mind. SYJMr.F is a great book and the bits about LosAlamos are interesting, particularly the stupidity of the Army Officers when RF goes about cracking safes and filing cabinets for fun.
While I am ashamed that a British company should do something as sickenly lawyeresque as try and patent hyperlinks, worse try and enforce such a grubby little thing, I must point out that...
a) As previously mentioned British != English. (I am a mongrel but mostly Welsh. I am also British.)
b) A fairly large proportion of modern inventions were originally British (often scottish in fact). The hovercraft and the earthquake and bouncing bombs (Barnes Wallace), the television (Logie Baird) and (arguably, I freely admit) the turbine jet engine by Sir Frank Whittle. Plus we can blame the Scots for various portions of thermodynamics, although Gibb that awful Yank;-) gave us his function too. Although I won't give Tim Berners-Lee credit for the Internet (thankyou Al Gore, NOT!) he did have a fairly major role in it.
c) On a final note since studying in France I have become increasingly suspect about the 'history' of certain discoveries: Leibniz and Newton over Calculus. 'La Loi de Descartes et Snell' in France, 'Snell's Law' in the UK. Charles' and Boyle's Law vs. La Loi de Mariotte (sp?). So... take everything of this nature with a pinch of salt.
Yes, except that history has proven many times that you cannot put anything back in Pandora's box. It is a similar argument to Eddie Izzard's on armies -
'Every country needs an army... because of organised arseholes. Hitler was an organised arsehole.'
These organised arseholes, and we have plenty of them in this world, do not have the willpower or sensitivity to put the 'demon' back in the box.
Do you wish to return to an age of no antibiotics a 75% child mortality and a country governed by an elite based on birth rather than ability?
Okay, programming for a company isn't just sitting at a desk coding...at least it wasn't for me (I wrote internal systems / 'intranet' pages in Perl).
If you want to write software which really does make life/work easier, better and simpler (what else is software for?) you have to go and ask people what functions they need in a software package which will best suit their needs. Yes?
This is called communication with your co-workers - don't be afraid,it can actually be stimulating!
It is the number of entities in a mole of anything - defined such that 1 mole of a substance has a mass equivalent to the relative atomic/molecular mass of the substence therein.
As a small point, I am told that the world has been calorifically self-sustaining for a few years and isapproaching nutritional sufficiency also. What we lack is the political will to make it happen - every dictator has a few troublesome minorities it is convenient to let starve.
Famine is generally accepted to be a MANMADE occurrence caused by a semi/deliberate policy of governments.
Got a troublesome minority? No problem, wait for a food shortage and then fail to do anything about it, or alternatively, make it worse through selective policy manipulation.
Nah, just skip out the electrical bit by using biopolymers and other such exotic materials which turn chemical energy into motion directly à la muscle.
I like the bible: it's one of the reasons why I believe in a compulsory religious education. It acts like an innocculation against rabid fundamentalism later.(Alas not original, would thqt I could be so witty. 'Corruptions of Empire' Alex Cockburn).
The rope accelerates and from you point of view 'spagettifies', but because of the relaitve differences in time à la Relativity you will never see it pass the event horizon. The closer it gets, the bigger the time differential so it appears from your point of view to approach the hole asymptotically.
This could of course be total crap, but it's what I remember reading in some book or other with the word 'quantum' in the title.
Elgon
Yup.
Science in schools, both here in the UK and in the US, has gone down the tubes.
Example: 'Which planet are we sending this (the HST) to?'. Senator Albert Gore.
Elgon
Righty, here is a basic explanation. Some of the bits will pobably be slightly inaccurate but that's okay, you're all understanding people.
Stars are big and hence they have a big gravitational field. What prevents the star from collapsing is basically the heat and light it produces by fusing lighter elements into heavy ones. When the star runs out of available hydrogen to burn it then starts to burn helium and so on up/across the periodic table until it reaches iron which it can't fuse because the released enegy per nucleon is negative.
(non-MS)ie. It don't produce any heat.
The star then begins to collpse. There are various thing that can happen, depending on the mass of the star. If it is big enough, the whole shebang colapses until the core is hyper-compact and reaches the exclusion-principle limit. The outer layers rebound at a fair old fraction of the speed of light (10%???) producing a supernova (I forget which type, IIa???). If it is still above a certain mass, the Chandrasekhar limit IIRC, then it collapses further until the curvature of space around it becomes infinite (as per Gen'l Relativity).
When selling property, rules are clearly defined. Once the sale takes place, no other contracts could be in force. This is because the new owner has the sole right and responsibility for that sold item. The seller has no rights, responsibilities, implied or otherwise, once he/she has received payment at the agreed price.
End of story.
Hmm, go tell that to the various parts of the firearms industry currently having their asses sued off by various misguided, politically correct etc... etc... cities.
Elgon
Disclaimer - I make no apologies for my views on firearms. I have been a responsible fireams user since the age of 13. All forms of armed violence, except in reasonable self-defence, defence of the law or the defence of others in danger, are wrong.
Re:A must-read for any Open Source fan
on
Hackers
·
· Score: 1
This sort of thing is a must.
At my parents' house there are books in nearly every single room of the house - always including the upstairs toilet and usually the downstairs toilet. I grew up with reading as well as radio and tv.
What really wierds me out is that I go to University with people who grew up in houses that did not have a single book in them. More, what frightens me is that there are people whose only reading material is daily tabloid crap.
It doesn't have to be Sartre or even Iain Banks, just something which will expose you to new ideas.
"Without change something sleeps inside us and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken." Duke Leto Atreides, Dune (film version), Frank Herbert.
Elgon
Re:Computer games -- Woohoo!
on
Hackers
·
· Score: 1
I wrote a text adventure for the ZX Spectrum 48k.
Ahhhh those were the days, burble, burble, wurble shlupppp..
Definitely.(Is there a collective noun for geeks? A network? A university? A cluster?)
I think the idea is a great one. I have a bunch of friends who I'd love to do this with but we all live too far apart: Matt the security dude, Alex the C/C++ guru, Tom the HTML/Web Design God and me, ummm... well I can do a bit of Perl/CGI stuff and not much else but hey, I'm learning.
It would be a great learning environment too: Oh damn buffer overflow security problems in my code: Matt, how do I sort this?
Truly, I have seen the promised land. My girlfriend (HTML/Web design God's sister) might disagree as she is horrified by my geek apprenticeship. (Although we could keep her quiet by building a computer drive unit and telescope for her - 'strominer).
I mean, what could be better than weekend-all-night popcorn, DVD 'n' Quake sessions?
You have nothing to fear if you are not a criminal
The cry of the secret policeman everywhere. I wish you were right. But...
I don't believe it I am afraid. Sorry, call me a conspiracy theorist, whatever but our governments clearly feel that they cannot trust their citizens, ergo we cannot trust them.
Slashdot Mirror
Howie, you read my mind. SYJMr.F is a great book and the bits about LosAlamos are interesting, particularly the stupidity of the Army Officers when RF goes about cracking safes and filing cabinets for fun.
Elgon
While I am ashamed that a British company should do something as sickenly lawyeresque as try and patent hyperlinks, worse try and enforce such a grubby little thing, I must point out that...
a) As previously mentioned British != English. (I am a mongrel but mostly Welsh. I am also British.)
b) A fairly large proportion of modern inventions were originally British (often scottish in fact). The hovercraft and the earthquake and bouncing bombs (Barnes Wallace), the television (Logie Baird) and (arguably, I freely admit) the turbine jet engine by Sir Frank Whittle. Plus we can blame the Scots for various portions of thermodynamics, although Gibb that awful Yank ;-) gave us his function too. Although I won't give Tim Berners-Lee credit for the Internet (thankyou Al Gore, NOT!) he did have a fairly major role in it.
c) On a final note since studying in France I have become increasingly suspect about the 'history' of certain discoveries: Leibniz and Newton over Calculus. 'La Loi de Descartes et Snell' in France, 'Snell's Law' in the UK. Charles' and Boyle's Law vs. La Loi de Mariotte (sp?). So... take everything of this nature with a pinch of salt.
Elgon
Yes, except that history has proven many times that you cannot put anything back in Pandora's box. It is a similar argument to Eddie Izzard's on armies -
... because of organised arseholes. Hitler was an organised arsehole.'
'Every country needs an army
These organised arseholes, and we have plenty of them in this world, do not have the willpower or sensitivity to put the 'demon' back in the box.
Do you wish to return to an age of no antibiotics a 75% child mortality and a country governed by an elite based on birth rather than ability?
Elgon
WRONG! (IMHO of course...)
Okay, programming for a company isn't just sitting at a desk coding...at least it wasn't for me (I wrote internal systems / 'intranet' pages in Perl).
If you want to write software which really does make life/work easier, better and simpler (what else is software for?) you have to go and ask people what functions they need in a software package which will best suit their needs. Yes?
This is called communication with your co-workers - don't be afraid,it can actually be stimulating!
Elgon
Avogadro's number - 6.022E23 IIRC.
It is the number of entities in a mole of anything - defined such that 1 mole of a substance has a mass equivalent to the relative atomic/molecular mass of the substence therein.
Elgon
As a small point, I am told that the world has been calorifically self-sustaining for a few years and isapproaching nutritional sufficiency also. What we lack is the political will to make it happen - every dictator has a few troublesome minorities it is convenient to let starve.
Elgon
The 'grey goo' hegemonising swarm already exists - we call it life.
Elgon
Sounds like you know your stuff - in some ways an engineered bacterium or virus is a nanite!
Elgon
Famine is generally accepted to be a MANMADE occurrence caused by a semi/deliberate policy of governments.
Got a troublesome minority? No problem, wait for a food shortage and then fail to do anything about it, or alternatively, make it worse through selective policy manipulation.
Elgon
Nah, just skip out the electrical bit by using biopolymers and other such exotic materials which turn chemical energy into motion directly à la muscle.
Elgon
The imperial system has its uses - namely in the handloading of ammunition for firearms: The numbers are just so much more convenient.
OTOH for just about anything else (barring spectroscopy in chemistry I admit) the good old metric system kicks butt.
Elgon
Nah, he's just an arsehole.
(OTOH I would defend to the death his absolute right to spiel whatever liberal horseshit he wishes.)
'Liberalism - You can do anything you like as long as we agree with it.'
Elgon
I like the bible: it's one of the reasons why I believe in a compulsory religious education. It acts like an innocculation against rabid fundamentalism later.(Alas not original, would thqt I could be so witty. 'Corruptions of Empire' Alex Cockburn).
Elgon
The rope accelerates and from you point of view 'spagettifies', but because of the relaitve differences in time à la Relativity you will never see it pass the event horizon. The closer it gets, the bigger the time differential so it appears from your point of view to approach the hole asymptotically. This could of course be total crap, but it's what I remember reading in some book or other with the word 'quantum' in the title. Elgon
I believe that black holes evaporate: the smaller the hole the faster the evaporation. This is a result of 'quantum tunnelling'.
Karma whoring, moi?
Elgon
Yup. Science in schools, both here in the UK and in the US, has gone down the tubes. Example: 'Which planet are we sending this (the HST) to?'. Senator Albert Gore. Elgon
Righty, here is a basic explanation. Some of the bits will pobably be slightly inaccurate but that's okay, you're all understanding people.
Stars are big and hence they have a big gravitational field. What prevents the star from collapsing is basically the heat and light it produces by fusing lighter elements into heavy ones. When the star runs out of available hydrogen to burn it then starts to burn helium and so on up/across the periodic table until it reaches iron which it can't fuse because the released enegy per nucleon is negative.
(non-MS)ie. It don't produce any heat.
The star then begins to collpse. There are various thing that can happen, depending on the mass of the star. If it is big enough, the whole shebang colapses until the core is hyper-compact and reaches the exclusion-principle limit. The outer layers rebound at a fair old fraction of the speed of light (10%???) producing a supernova (I forget which type, IIa???). If it is still above a certain mass, the Chandrasekhar limit IIRC, then it collapses further until the curvature of space around it becomes infinite (as per Gen'l Relativity).
Voilà. Black hole. (All corections welcome:-)
Elgon
Xerox is/was of you're greek.
'xeros' - dry, IIRC, as in 'dry' copying; toner not ink.
Elgon
End of story.
Hmm, go tell that to the various parts of the firearms industry currently having their asses sued off by various misguided, politically correct etc... etc... cities.
Elgon
Disclaimer - I make no apologies for my views on firearms. I have been a responsible fireams user since the age of 13. All forms of armed violence, except in reasonable self-defence, defence of the law or the defence of others in danger, are wrong.
This sort of thing is a must.
At my parents' house there are books in nearly every single room of the house - always including the upstairs toilet and usually the downstairs toilet. I grew up with reading as well as radio and tv.
What really wierds me out is that I go to University with people who grew up in houses that did not have a single book in them. More, what frightens me is that there are people whose only reading material is daily tabloid crap.
It doesn't have to be Sartre or even Iain Banks, just something which will expose you to new ideas.
"Without change something sleeps inside us and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken." Duke Leto Atreides, Dune (film version), Frank Herbert.
Elgon
I wrote a text adventure for the ZX Spectrum 48k.
Ahhhh those were the days, burble, burble, wurble shlupppp..
Shoot me now.
Elgon
Marry me. (I don't just want a green card ;-)
Elgon
Definitely.(Is there a collective noun for geeks? A network? A university? A cluster?)
I think the idea is a great one. I have a bunch of friends who I'd love to do this with but we all live too far apart: Matt the security dude, Alex the C/C++ guru, Tom the HTML/Web Design God and me, ummm... well I can do a bit of Perl/CGI stuff and not much else but hey, I'm learning.
It would be a great learning environment too: Oh damn buffer overflow security problems in my code: Matt, how do I sort this?
Truly, I have seen the promised land. My girlfriend (HTML/Web design God's sister) might disagree as she is horrified by my geek apprenticeship. (Although we could keep her quiet by building a computer drive unit and telescope for her - 'strominer).
I mean, what could be better than weekend-all-night popcorn, DVD 'n' Quake sessions?
Elgon
Hmmm, aftershock.
This one's mostly for UK'ers but try:
vodka
aftershock
irn-bru (gotta be the proper stuff from up north, not the weaker, insipid stuff you get in england)
Never tried coding on it. Never would.
Elgon
The cry of the secret policeman everywhere. I wish you were right. But...
I don't believe it I am afraid. Sorry, call me a conspiracy theorist, whatever but our governments clearly feel that they cannot trust their citizens, ergo we cannot trust them.
Elgon