He doesn't. I googled the guy/bozo in question when I first saw this story a couple of days ago, and I got the impression that he had a pretty long and respected track record in the field. I wouldn't dismiss him out of hand.
Still, grandparent's assertion is not necessarily out of line. When I was heavily into neural networks a few years back, I concluded that 70% of the published articles in the field were utter hogwash.
A straight line is very, very expensive as a way of flying between planets.
Serenity is set 500 years in the future. I'm assuming the ships have enough power so that the effects of gravity are negligible. (Like, when I'm out for a walk, I would never dream of going over Sentinel Hill to get to the mall, because it's way too steep and long a climb; but that's the way I go if I'm driving because it's the shortest route and my car is more than capable of going up such a steep incline)
By the way, I don't know where you got 496 as the number of straight lines between 32 points.
32 possible starting points. For each starting point there are 31 possible destinations. 31*32=992. Then you divide by two because a line from A to B is the same as a line from B to A.
(Or how vastly far it is in a galaxy, which Firefly sometimes declared to be its setting.)
Almost all shows are set in a galaxy:-)
A solar system is not like a western frontier where you meet other ships along the trail.
That really depends on how many ships there are, how fast they move, and at what range they can detect each other. And it's not like they're moving at random. They will generally be going in straight lines between planets.
Assuming 32 planets, there are 496 straight-line routes, and if there are 50,000 ships on the go at any one time, then for any journey there will be on average around 50 ships heading in the opposite direction. If a typical journey takes 10 days then that's 5 ships a day you have a chance of running across.
I'm sorry, but that is what editors are supposed to do. They take submitted text and edit it so that it conforms to their publication's style guide, with consistant spelling, punctuation, etc. Granted Slashdot isn't the most consistant publication in the 'verse, but if US spellings is what they've opted for then, that's the way it is.
If you can accept artificial gravity on a planetary scale, then why not artificial heat on a planetary scale? perhaps combined with technology that helps planet retain heat, by greatly reducing the energy they radiate into space. That could lead to planets that are warm, perhaps even hot, but lacking in vegetation because of reduced sun light. Which is exactly what we see in Firefly's outer worlds.
But there is something weird about people who can afford an interstellar spaceship but still use revolvers to shoot each other. Yes, a quirk of the show.
Hand guns are a simple, effective, and reliable technology. People still use things like paper, knives, brushes, etc even though those are millenia old.
Frankly, what's always bothered me are all the run-of-the-mill sci-fi shows that feature only marginally effective laser weapons that would be completely out-gunned by any of today's assault rifles.
I was reading this story in bed on my hiptop, ssh'ed to my desktop, downloaded the wav and piped it over the stereo in the living where my nephew is watching tv at 1:30am. Freaked him out a little.
I've helped a lot of older people (70s+) with their computers, and one thing I've noticed is that many of them simply don't grok the whole idea behind windows management - minimize, maximize, resize, it'll all beyond them. They start an app, they work in that app, they close the app, then they start another one. The idea of having two apps running together side-by-side or overlapping, and jumping between them is too much for them.
My father, who has been using Windows on an almost daly basis since the Win3.1 days, is like that. Yesterday, for the umpteenth time, I had to go and help him because he said Word was no longer coming up. It was coming up, but had been inadvertantly resized to just the top window frame, and was so small that he hadn't noticed it. There were about a dozen instances of Word, all on top of each other.
And who here hasn't helped somebody who had accidently dragged the Winddows task bar to another edge of the desktop?
I would love to see a linux distro and/or window manager where I could lock down the behavior, preventing the user from accidently screwing everything up. I imagine you could do something like that, with a bit of effort, with icewm or fvwm. But it would be nice to have a ready-to-go distro, ubuntu-grandma or something, along with some remote admin tools already set up, like sshd and an easy way to connect a Remote Desktop session so I could see exactly what they were seeing.
It's possible, especially if we're the only ones in the universe:-) But when you're dealing with galactic and evolutionary timescales in the billions of years, our existance to date is an insignificant blink of the eye. Chances are anyone else is miles ahead of us. People go on about how big space is, but they often lose sight of just how old it is.
My bet is that, if we ever talk to life somewhere else in the universe, that they are literally nothing like us.
Disagree. Chances are, any aliens we come across will be more technologically advanced by a few hundred million years. At that level of robotics, nanotech, and bioengineering, they could take any physical form they want. And if they wanted to interact with us humanoids, in our humanoid environment, then I'm betting they'd chose to do so as humanoids. (one way to make first contact with primitive humans in a non-threatening way would be to come as small humanoids, maybe with features like a human baby -- large eyed and hairless, not unlike the Greys of UFO lore; as well, faking a spaceship crash so as to appear especially harmless and in need of assistance might be a good way to gauge our reactions; at least that's what I'd do if I was an alien and it was up to me)
What is the point of this? I thought browser speed just didnt matter anymore, at least it doesnt to me. Does anyone even notice rendering anymore?
I remember a few years ago reading about research into UI design and computer-human interaction, and the data showed a very strong correlation between computer responsiveness and user satisfaction. Even a difference as small as a tenth of a second, could have a significant impact on a user's mood and frame of mind. You may not notice it at a conscious level, but I think it does make a big difference. Faster computers/software/websites = happier users.
1) I'd be curious to see how the results compare when looking at older more seasoned drivers. I take my driving very seriously, and the first few years that I was behind the wheel, I could tell that just having a conversation with a passenger was a distraction which impaired my driving significantly. Now however I'm so accustomed to driving that is not an issue. I can totally zone out and drive on auto-pilot if need be (though where's the fun in that).
2) Everyone is different. Some people are better drivers even when drunk or distracted than many of the idiots on the road are at the best of times. I think if you want to drive while talking on your cell, say, you should be able to take a special driving test that demonstrates you have the talent to do so safely, and get a special license that says so.
In Canada (and I believe throughout the British Commonwealth), we have really big Boxing Day/Week sales right after Christmas, so I'm sure there were plenty of Samsungs just bought that won't be covered. Not sure if there are similar sales in the US (where Boxing Day isn't celebrated).
Unfortunately it's not a simple matter of bitrate or resolution. My understanding is that the 250 uses noncompliant PTS information in the mpeg2 stream, and that this can cause sync errors. Not everybody experiences it, and it seems to be more of a problem with encoding from VHS rather than from the tuner. I've found the problem using the tuner as well as s-video from a cable box as the source, and when I use replex on the stream, it complains about masses of PTS errors.
I haven't tried avidemux2 (I don't have time for editing or transcoding) but I'm guessing whatever it does to the file corrects the glitches.
A few weeks ago, I picked up a Hauppauge PVR-250 which I'm using with MythTV. It all works great, except when it comes time to burn to DVD. It turns out that the variable bitrate mpeg2 streams that the Hauppauge PVR-250/350 cards put out aren't fully compliant (or at least not using the latest linux ivtv drivers). This isn't a problem during playback, but when you want to convert to DVD format using standard tools like transcode/mpeg2desc and mplex, the audio and video drift out of sync.
It took me quite a bit of googling and trial and error to figure out how to deal with the problem. (short answer: replex; longer answer: get mythtvburn and see how it does it). If I'd known about this going in, I would have spent more time researching other hardware options.
I don't deny the logic that some jobs might be lost. That isn't the issue. This is about statistical significance and scientific proof.
Most critics of global warming don't deny the logic that man-made pollutants can affect the climate. But what has been repeatedly called into question by critics is the statistical significance of these changes compared to the climate's natural fluctuations. All I ask is that these dire economic forecasts of yours be held to the same standard of statistical proof as the environmentalist's dire climactic forecasts.
Here is a historical graph of US unemployment rates from 1948 to present. It goes up. It goes down. It's been fairly stable over the past year, and if anything is on a downward slope.
Is there any scientific proof that the unemployment rate has ever been significantly affected by environmental legislation? I didn't think so.
And even if you're right, and jobs are lost, so what? Look at the graph. Half a century of ups and downs. Wars. Assassinations. Natural disasters. Fuel shortages. Recessions. Economic crisis both large and small. And it hasn't been the end of the world. Heck, other countries have gone through a hundred times worse, and they're still kicking.
Whatever economic problems Kyoto might cause, it's nothing we haven't seen before. But with global climate change, we are in unchartered territory, totally in the dark as to what could happen. Right now we could be dancing on the edge of a slippery slope, already feeling gravity's tug, drawing us down into an abyss from which there is no return.
And before you ask me what scientific proof there is of that, remember, I asked for your proof first:-)
It is easy to say "Kyoto treaty will cause lost jobs" but much tougher to prove it.
It's only tough for those that don't understand economics and blindly follow the liberal/environmentalist party line.
Economic forecasts are just theory, and are not known for being overwhelmingly accurate. The fact is that economies rise and fall with or without treaties like Kyoto. Jobs are lost. Jobs are gained. It happens all the time.
Now maybe, in theory, a treaty like Kyoto might cause some job loss, but there is no hard scientific evidence that it would cause any significant job loss compared to the natural rise and fall of the economy.
!? is also standard chess notation, and means that the move was an interesting one (usually in the sense that it was unexpected ). That's how I first came across it. I use it all the time in informal writing, usually to indicate extreme bewilderment or fascination. Similar chess notations include: ! for a good move, ? for a poor move !! for a brilliant move, ?? for a blunder, and ?! for a dubious move.
Is the day that some phisher gets control of an ISP's name server, either by hacking it or by being in cahoots with the ISP. They could then redirect somebank.com to their own server, and just sit back and let all the unwitting victims come to them. Throw up a "service not available, try again later", message after login, and the victim would leave, totally unaware.
What would be the best way to protect yourself against this? Is it possible to set up caching DNS to pool from multiple independent sources and either alert on conflict or resolve by majority rule?
Bayesian folders is on my wishlist too. However...
So I could drag credit card notices to my Bills folder
What I really want is a streamlined interface whose focus is classifying emails, without without having to drag and drop, and scroll and click through a list of nested folders. Every GUI email client I've seen follows this same retarted paradigm. If I have to perform and action hundreds and thousands of times, then it should be as quick and simple as possible.
I mean if I can reply to an email with a single click, the why can't I classify it as work/misc in two clicks? Every email needs to be classified, but they don't all need to be replied to.
It would also be nice if you could set emails to expire in a week/month/3months/year. I think there may be some clients that can already do this.
It's getting to the point where I'm going to have call shenanigans on the whole freakin' planet. Am I really supposed to believe that an OS started by a Finnish university student a decade ago and designed to run on a 386, is now running the most powerful computer ever built? I mean, come on!
there is a long tradition of this sort of internally inconsistent narrative embellishment.
Observe Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe who strips naked, swims out to the shipwreck, and fills his pockets with all the necessities he requires.
According to Project Gutenberg, the passages from Robinson Crusoe are:
I resolved, if possible, to get to the ship; so I pulled off my clothes - for the weather was hot to extremity - and took the water.
and a few lines later:
And, first, I found that all the ship's provisions were dry and untouched by the water, and being very well disposed to eat, I went to the bread room and filled my pockets with biscuit, and ate it as I went about other things, for I had no time to lose.
This is not necessarily inconsistent narrative. According to Letterman's Lemma, there are alway at least 10 explanations for everything. Hence:
Top 10 Explanations for the Robinson Crusoe Pocket Reference
10. Trivially, if he has no pockets, then it is very easy for him to fill them.
9. As another poster suggested, they were folds of skin in his emaciated body.
8. He meant his cheek pockets. In other words he filled his face with biscuit.
7. He found some dry clothes along with the provisions.
6. He took off his clothes on the beach, but then carried them with him.
5. He only took off some of his clothes and had pockets in his undergarments.
4. He's a kangaroo. Oh it's pockets. OK, two Kangaroos.
3. He happened to be carrying a billiard table.
2. Filled my pockets with biscuit is actually an old colloquialism for shit myself.
And the number one explanation:
1. It was a bread room. Obviously they were pita pockets.
Will you be happier knowing that you wasted all that money and effort that made for a lower quality of life for everyone, all for nothing?
I wouldn't call getting companies to reduce pollution "a big a waste of money". And it's not as if the money is going to go up in smoke, it will just be spent in different areas.
People talk about the dire economic impact of something like Kyoto, but the fact is that the global economy is a very complex system that we really don't understand well. Although we only have about a century's worth of meaningful data, it is clear that the global economy fluctuates on its own. It's risen and fallen in the past and will continue to do so, regardless of environmental spending. Is there any solid statistical evidence that Kyoto would have a significant impact on the global economy? I don't think so.
What we need is a new type of astronaut, one that is perfectly happy wallowing in garbage and excrement. The solution should be obvious, as it was forseen decades ago on a popular TV show...
Slashdot Mirror
Still, grandparent's assertion is not necessarily out of line. When I was heavily into neural networks a few years back, I concluded that 70% of the published articles in the field were utter hogwash.
Assuming 32 planets, there are 496 straight-line routes, and if there are 50,000 ships on the go at any one time, then for any journey there will be on average around 50 ships heading in the opposite direction. If a typical journey takes 10 days then that's 5 ships a day you have a chance of running across.
I'm sorry, but that is what editors are supposed to do. They take submitted text and edit it so that it conforms to their publication's style guide, with consistant spelling, punctuation, etc. Granted Slashdot isn't the most consistant publication in the 'verse, but if US spellings is what they've opted for then, that's the way it is.
Frankly, what's always bothered me are all the run-of-the-mill sci-fi shows that feature only marginally effective laser weapons that would be completely out-gunned by any of today's assault rifles.
I love technology!
My father, who has been using Windows on an almost daly basis since the Win3.1 days, is like that. Yesterday, for the umpteenth time, I had to go and help him because he said Word was no longer coming up. It was coming up, but had been inadvertantly resized to just the top window frame, and was so small that he hadn't noticed it. There were about a dozen instances of Word, all on top of each other.
And who here hasn't helped somebody who had accidently dragged the Winddows task bar to another edge of the desktop?
I would love to see a linux distro and/or window manager where I could lock down the behavior, preventing the user from accidently screwing everything up. I imagine you could do something like that, with a bit of effort, with icewm or fvwm. But it would be nice to have a ready-to-go distro, ubuntu-grandma or something, along with some remote admin tools already set up, like sshd and an easy way to connect a Remote Desktop session so I could see exactly what they were seeing.
Which is why the smarter computer nerds know to eat cheetos with chop sticks. Honestly, what are they teaching you kids in school these days?
Gentoo has noatime as default. There's even a comment in /etc/ftsab about how it improves performance.
It's possible, especially if we're the only ones in the universe :-) But when you're dealing with galactic and evolutionary timescales in the billions of years, our existance to date is an insignificant blink of the eye. Chances are anyone else is miles ahead of us. People go on about how big space is, but they often lose sight of just how old it is.
2) Everyone is different. Some people are better drivers even when drunk or distracted than many of the idiots on the road are at the best of times. I think if you want to drive while talking on your cell, say, you should be able to take a special driving test that demonstrates you have the talent to do so safely, and get a special license that says so.
In Canada (and I believe throughout the British Commonwealth), we have really big Boxing Day/Week sales right after Christmas, so I'm sure there were plenty of Samsungs just bought that won't be covered. Not sure if there are similar sales in the US (where Boxing Day isn't celebrated).
I haven't tried avidemux2 (I don't have time for editing or transcoding) but I'm guessing whatever it does to the file corrects the glitches.
It took me quite a bit of googling and trial and error to figure out how to deal with the problem. (short answer: replex; longer answer: get mythtvburn and see how it does it). If I'd known about this going in, I would have spent more time researching other hardware options.
Most critics of global warming don't deny the logic that man-made pollutants can affect the climate. But what has been repeatedly called into question by critics is the statistical significance of these changes compared to the climate's natural fluctuations. All I ask is that these dire economic forecasts of yours be held to the same standard of statistical proof as the environmentalist's dire climactic forecasts.
Here is a historical graph of US unemployment rates from 1948 to present. It goes up. It goes down. It's been fairly stable over the past year, and if anything is on a downward slope.
Is there any scientific proof that the unemployment rate has ever been significantly affected by environmental legislation? I didn't think so.
And even if you're right, and jobs are lost, so what? Look at the graph. Half a century of ups and downs. Wars. Assassinations. Natural disasters. Fuel shortages. Recessions. Economic crisis both large and small. And it hasn't been the end of the world. Heck, other countries have gone through a hundred times worse, and they're still kicking.
Whatever economic problems Kyoto might cause, it's nothing we haven't seen before. But with global climate change, we are in unchartered territory, totally in the dark as to what could happen. Right now we could be dancing on the edge of a slippery slope, already feeling gravity's tug, drawing us down into an abyss from which there is no return.
And before you ask me what scientific proof there is of that, remember, I asked for your proof first :-)
Now maybe, in theory, a treaty like Kyoto might cause some job loss, but there is no hard scientific evidence that it would cause any significant job loss compared to the natural rise and fall of the economy.
!? is also standard chess notation, and means that the move was an interesting one (usually in the sense that it was unexpected ). That's how I first came across it. I use it all the time in informal writing, usually to indicate extreme bewilderment or fascination. Similar chess notations include: ! for a good move, ? for a poor move !! for a brilliant move, ?? for a blunder, and ?! for a dubious move.
What would be the best way to protect yourself against this? Is it possible to set up caching DNS to pool from multiple independent sources and either alert on conflict or resolve by majority rule?
I mean if I can reply to an email with a single click, the why can't I classify it as work/misc in two clicks? Every email needs to be classified, but they don't all need to be replied to.
It would also be nice if you could set emails to expire in a week/month/3months/year. I think there may be some clients that can already do this.
Seriously, am I on candid camera?
Top 10 Explanations for the Robinson Crusoe Pocket Reference
10. Trivially, if he has no pockets, then it is very easy for him to fill them.
9. As another poster suggested, they were folds of skin in his emaciated body.
8. He meant his cheek pockets. In other words he filled his face with biscuit.
7. He found some dry clothes along with the provisions.
6. He took off his clothes on the beach, but then carried them with him.
5. He only took off some of his clothes and had pockets in his undergarments.
4. He's a kangaroo. Oh it's pockets . OK, two Kangaroos.
3. He happened to be carrying a billiard table.
2. Filled my pockets with biscuit is actually an old colloquialism for shit myself.
And the number one explanation:
1. It was a bread room. Obviously they were pita pockets.
People talk about the dire economic impact of something like Kyoto, but the fact is that the global economy is a very complex system that we really don't understand well. Although we only have about a century's worth of meaningful data, it is clear that the global economy fluctuates on its own. It's risen and fallen in the past and will continue to do so, regardless of environmental spending. Is there any solid statistical evidence that Kyoto would have a significant impact on the global economy? I don't think so.
Pigs In Space!