And the Metric system is equally archaic, since it is based on a set of arbitrary units scaled on a number base designed to conform to human body measurements at the expense of usability.
A logical measurement system would use universal fundamental physical constants to define units, like the Planck distance (length) and Planck interval (time), the electron volt (charge), etc. And base 12 would be a superior choice for the base, since it is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6, instead of just 2 and 5.
If somebody is running Linux, they don't give a damn about Apple's "Human Computer Interaction" guidelines or the need for app writers to rewrite their Mac apps.
More importantly, lots of Mac apps are currently dependent on option-click combos -- setting such a combo to a RMB actually makes the computer easier to use. So perhaps it's HCI that's broken?
Apple made a good marketing choice in comparing it to the Vaio. Let's instead compare the $2,599 G4 PowerBook to a customized P!!! Dell Inspiron, $2,598...
Okay, now both have 128 MB RAM, the processor speeds are 400 vs. 800, both have 10 GB disks, both have DVDs, and both have Ethernet (the Dell on a PC Card). The screens are 15.0" for the Dell vs. 15.2" for the Apple. The Inspiron has twice the video RAM.
So, overall, pretty equivalent machines, for identical prices.
No, on a genetic level it will be mostly a guar, because genes are made of DNA, and the cow DNA has been replaced with guar DNA. There may be some cow mitochondria (depends if the mitochodrial DNA was also replaced), but it will be mostly a guar.
Now, given that the developmental hormonal triggers will be from the host cow womb, it's probable that the guar on a macroscopic level will have significant differences from a "natural" guar -- it might not even look all that much like a guar. If it even survives birth. But genetically, it will be a guar.
The standard file system shouldn't be dictated by the kernel at all. The current ext2isms in the kernel vfs code should be hunted down and eliminated, but not replaced by Reiserisms. Let the distros and users decide which fs they want to use; the kernel should be completely fs neutral.
[W]ill our children look back and wonder how we could have recklessly polluted space like that?
No. You see, the amount of raditation released by our fissioning a thousand tons of this stuff in space would still be a droplet compared to the hard radiation released by our Sun in a day. It would be like "polluting" the ocean with salt by pouring the contents of a salt shaker into it.
More importantly, the implicit philosophy in your last two sentences is downright dangerous. "But what unforseen consequences could this bring? You never know until it is too late," is an insane standard -- it means you cannot ever take action, because you can never be absolutely sure there are consequences you did not forsee. The only way to adhere to that standard is to lie down and die.
Added to which, the main point is that Steve Jobs abhors the PC platform, and thats why Apple will never move to PCs.
Except, of course, that the definition of "PC platform" is so nebulous. How about a system with the same peripheral bus and drive interface as the Mac, the processor bus of an Alpha, and a processor whose oldest ancestor is seven years old? (The chip? An Athlon.)
Since the Sledgehammer x86-64 instruction set is just a superset of IA-32, it wouldn't be much like going out on a limb to ship only x86-64 Crusoes. It might take a slight speed hit running IA-32 code, but the Crusoe isn't a high-speed part to begin with. And if the compatibility is done in the code-morphing software, the differences between an IA-32- and x86-64-compatible Crusoe would be one Flash RAM update either direction.
Actually, AMD's in good shape for SMP now, because they're using licensed Alpha technology for the current bus and are licensing Alpha technology for the multiprocessor bus.
Right. It looks like this deal may well wind up with Transmeta selling a 64-bit, Sledgehammer-compatible Crusoe for the mobile market at some date in the future, but for now, it's just a way for AMD to get software developed for the x86-64 architecture.
If your Karma is greater than 25, you post on/. way too much!
Yep. I do. In fact, this is my second account. My first, with a 4-digit ID#, had 98 karma when the caps came in, and only seeing the number go down depressed me. When this one goes up the handful of extra points to hit 50, I'll create another one.
all the United States has succeeded in doing is punishing the Iraqi people it says it's trying to protect.
Er, no, we aren't trying to protect the Iraqi people. We are trying to keep Saddam from building up enough forces to threaten the regional balance of power again by cutting off his money. It's old-fashioned balance-of-power politics, and its working exactly as intended.
Now, admittedly, U.S. politicians have been spouting lots of moralistic rhetoric about it. Hussein spouted lots of moralistic rhetoric about the justice of his invasion of Kuwait. In both cases, the rhetoric not only has nothing to do with what's happening, but never did and never will.
Frankly, we want Hussein to remain in charge of Iraq. If he falls, there's a good chance that the Kurds break off into their own country in the north, destabilizing our long-time ally Turkey. And there's a good chance the Shi'ite south also breaks off and becomes part of or an ally of Iran, putting the Iranians on the Kuwait border. Democracy is nice, but democracy in Iraq carries a severe risk to several long-term U.S. allies and to the economies of the democracies in North America, East Asia, and Europe.
Instead, the embargo leaves Saddam with enough power to keep his country united and defend itself from invasion, while rendering it unable to invade neighbors. Which is exactly what the U.S., EU, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Israel want.
Er, no. We just sold him arms when he was fighting Iran in the late Eighties. He seized power quite well on his own, and the Soviets provided him with arms and military advisors for his first fifteen years or so.
but as of right now most of the innovation of the past 50 years has been largely redundant in any measurable sense
Which is absolutely bullshit; because of the population growth allowed by the the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, the number of people who have died in all of human history is a smaller number than the number of humans alive today.
Stop and think about that. An innovation of the past 50 years is responsible for the existence of roughly one third of all humans who have ever lived in all of human history. Compared to that, things like the automobile and indoor plumbing have had only minimal impact.
Re:Fission holdback legit paranoia, not conspiracy
on
The Quest For Fusion
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· Score: 1
It's amazing that nobody ever remembers the 1957 Kystym incident. I mean, it was only the second biggest nuclear disaster in history (after Chernobyl)...
Re:This experiment ignores the big problems.
on
Green Mars
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· Score: 2
1) Most colonization theories start with the assumption that there will be enough permafrost water close enough to the surface; if it isn't, there of course is a very serious problem
2) Experiments have already been done showing that plants can be grown in a greenhouse with an atmosphere the pressure of that on the surface of Mars. For heat purposes a greenhouse will be necessary, of course.
3) The same experiments that dealt with the pressure showed that you can get by with a mostly-CO2 atmosphere. Water vapor will have to be higher, but if you have the water you need in the first place, it won't be a problem.
4) It'll be a problem when the colonies get big enough. In the early stages, they'll have to import some fertilizer to supplement waste recycling along with everything else that has to be imported from Earth.
5) Nope, they won't grow as well as they would on Earth, but the plants can get by.
6) Actually, the Martian atmosphere is pretty decent when it comes to screening out UV and other ionizing radiation, in part because you're already starting at 1/4 intensity. The greenhouse will also help, with the result that the radiation really won't be important.
He takes inventions made in the 19th century (light bulb, AC power, automobiles, indoor plumbing) and counts them as 1900-1950 inventions because they were made generally available then, but counts inventions not made generally available until 1950-2000 (television, antibiotics) as 1900-1950 inventions if they were first created then.
Then, inventions from 1950-1980 (the Green Revolution, the word processor, the jet passenger plane, spacecraft, satellites) are not counted as "modern" innovations, despite the fact that the article starts by comparing 1900-1950 to 1950-2000.
Finally, older inventions like the telegraph are compared to modern ones like the Internet.
So, this guy gives us an argument that actually reads, "the inventions of 1830-1980 are more important as a group than the inventions of 1980-2000, so we've stopped innovating".
Wow, how profound. I can probably give a good argument that the inventions of 775-1830 AD (a time period similarly 7.5 times longer than the later period being compared to), including the transoceanic ship, the gun, classical physics, calculus, and the moveable-type printing press, were more important than the innovations from 1830-1980.
And, of course, the 7.5-times-longer time period from 7100 BC to 775 AD saw even more important innovation, seeing the invention of animal domestication, agriculture, the wheel, standing armies, writing, etc.
That's the best response you can come up with? I must be a shill because I'm capable of logical thought?
If somebody GMed a plant to reverse the genders of the plant parts, increase the yield by three orders of magnatude, render the plant unable to propagate naturally, radically change the chemical composition of the edible seeds, and change the growth cycle from one appropriate for the tropics to one suitable for Ohio, what would your response be?
That's what's been done by random mutation and human selection to tesonite, a wild grass native to southern Mexico. The hybrid mutants differ so radically that, until the advent of DNA testing, many botanists refused to believe they were in fact descended from tesonite.
The problem here is that you have a view of the term "God" that drags in all the Judeo-Christio-Islamic baggage. But Zeus was a god-concept that was not a Creator, not omnipotent, not omnipresent, and not omniscient; none of those attributes are properly even implied by the term "God".
So this guy could merely believe in a God who just happens to know what DNA does and how it is sequenced. Creationism is not implied by his statement; you are inferring it based on your cultural assumptions.
If I carefully engineer a specific effect into the rice and have extensive oversight, you're opposed because I don't have long-term data. But if I take my rice and expose it to radiation, pick out the mutants, and crossbreed them, without oversight, you're okay with that.
Because, you do understand that all the crops in use in the world in all of history up to 1990 were created with the second method, right? And nobody does or ever has done any health studies to prove that a new variety is safe before making it generally available in those millenia of ad hoc mutation?
GM crops, because the changes aren't random, and because the changes are subject to scrutiny, is safer than the methods to create new crops for the last 10,000 years.
So do something useful, and protest against those dangerous, unsupervised non-GM crops, okay?
usually as the result of a school study and insistence
It's insane to allow one's children to attend grade school if there is any way to avoid it. The playground teaches mindless conformity to the peer group. Students are taught to blindly obey the dictates of authority figures. Ridiculous concepts of collective responsibility (where students ignorant of the identity of an anonymous troublemaker suffer because of the acts and feigned ignorance of others) are emphasized. Drugs are used to sedate children who aren't sufficiently controlled by the threat of punishment.
So what is our society doing? We're proposing extending it down to age 3, so we can brainwash the children ever earlier and simultaneously make it easier to put their mothers to work so they can make and buy more consumer crap...
Some day, we'll figure out a system that produces, say, eight adult humans for every ten children sent into it, instead of the current system that produces two vicious wolves, seven compliant sheep, and one human for every ten children put into it.
The beauty of the system is that if Congress chooses to act like a bunch of rednecks (like circa 1955), the Supreme Court can desegregrate schools with a courageous decision like Brown v. the Board of Education.
Maybe if stopped relying on White Power advocates like Rush Limburger for your "political wisdom" and took Political Science 101 you would stop spreading this FUD!!!
Given your apparent total ignorance of the facts of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas case, perhaps you should avoid casting aspersions?
Specifically, Congress was not involved in any way, shape, or form with the case. In Plessy v. Fergueson, the Supreme Court ruled that mandating separate accommodations was within the powers of the states. Congress was therefore, by Supreme Court ruling, powerless to end segregation in any state.
Actually, I'd argue that it's far more important that the books specifically be freely alterable, at least for the K-12 works. The current textbooks for those grades, from major publishers, are regualarly riddled with serious errors.
Worried that the historical text you download may have been altered by, say, Neo-Nazis? Certification marks from universities would give you as much assurance as you currently have with the textbook your kid brings home from school.
Slashdot Mirror
And the Metric system is equally archaic, since it is based on a set of arbitrary units scaled on a number base designed to conform to human body measurements at the expense of usability.
A logical measurement system would use universal fundamental physical constants to define units, like the Planck distance (length) and Planck interval (time), the electron volt (charge), etc. And base 12 would be a superior choice for the base, since it is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6, instead of just 2 and 5.
If somebody is running Linux, they don't give a damn about Apple's "Human Computer Interaction" guidelines or the need for app writers to rewrite their Mac apps.
More importantly, lots of Mac apps are currently dependent on option-click combos -- setting such a combo to a RMB actually makes the computer easier to use. So perhaps it's HCI that's broken?
Apple made a good marketing choice in comparing it to the Vaio. Let's instead compare the $2,599 G4 PowerBook to a customized P!!! Dell Inspiron, $2,598...
Okay, now both have 128 MB RAM, the processor speeds are 400 vs. 800, both have 10 GB disks, both have DVDs, and both have Ethernet (the Dell on a PC Card). The screens are 15.0" for the Dell vs. 15.2" for the Apple. The Inspiron has twice the video RAM.
So, overall, pretty equivalent machines, for identical prices.
No, on a genetic level it will be mostly a guar, because genes are made of DNA, and the cow DNA has been replaced with guar DNA. There may be some cow mitochondria (depends if the mitochodrial DNA was also replaced), but it will be mostly a guar.
Now, given that the developmental hormonal triggers will be from the host cow womb, it's probable that the guar on a macroscopic level will have significant differences from a "natural" guar -- it might not even look all that much like a guar. If it even survives birth. But genetically, it will be a guar.
The standard file system shouldn't be dictated by the kernel at all. The current ext2isms in the kernel vfs code should be hunted down and eliminated, but not replaced by Reiserisms. Let the distros and users decide which fs they want to use; the kernel should be completely fs neutral.
[W]ill our children look back and wonder how we could have recklessly polluted space like that?
No. You see, the amount of raditation released by our fissioning a thousand tons of this stuff in space would still be a droplet compared to the hard radiation released by our Sun in a day. It would be like "polluting" the ocean with salt by pouring the contents of a salt shaker into it.
More importantly, the implicit philosophy in your last two sentences is downright dangerous. "But what unforseen consequences could this bring? You never know until it is too late," is an insane standard -- it means you cannot ever take action, because you can never be absolutely sure there are consequences you did not forsee. The only way to adhere to that standard is to lie down and die.
Added to which, the main point is that Steve Jobs abhors the PC platform, and thats why Apple will never move to PCs.
Except, of course, that the definition of "PC platform" is so nebulous. How about a system with the same peripheral bus and drive interface as the Mac, the processor bus of an Alpha, and a processor whose oldest ancestor is seven years old? (The chip? An Athlon.)
News flash: Most of us are hoping for OSX, including Aqua, on Intel-based architecture, not the other way around.
And some people, instead of just hoping, are trying to deliver it.
Hmm. You know, it would be nice if somebody were working on a free clone of the NeXT/MacOS X graphics system.
Oh, they already are. GNUstep.
Since the Sledgehammer x86-64 instruction set is just a superset of IA-32, it wouldn't be much like going out on a limb to ship only x86-64 Crusoes. It might take a slight speed hit running IA-32 code, but the Crusoe isn't a high-speed part to begin with. And if the compatibility is done in the code-morphing software, the differences between an IA-32- and x86-64-compatible Crusoe would be one Flash RAM update either direction.
Actually, AMD's in good shape for SMP now, because they're using licensed Alpha technology for the current bus and are licensing Alpha technology for the multiprocessor bus.
Right. It looks like this deal may well wind up with Transmeta selling a 64-bit, Sledgehammer-compatible Crusoe for the mobile market at some date in the future, but for now, it's just a way for AMD to get software developed for the x86-64 architecture.
/. way too much!
If your Karma is greater than 25, you post on
Yep. I do. In fact, this is my second account. My first, with a 4-digit ID#, had 98 karma when the caps came in, and only seeing the number go down depressed me. When this one goes up the handful of extra points to hit 50, I'll create another one.
all the United States has succeeded in doing is punishing the Iraqi people it says it's trying to protect.
Er, no, we aren't trying to protect the Iraqi people. We are trying to keep Saddam from building up enough forces to threaten the regional balance of power again by cutting off his money. It's old-fashioned balance-of-power politics, and its working exactly as intended.
Now, admittedly, U.S. politicians have been spouting lots of moralistic rhetoric about it. Hussein spouted lots of moralistic rhetoric about the justice of his invasion of Kuwait. In both cases, the rhetoric not only has nothing to do with what's happening, but never did and never will.
Frankly, we want Hussein to remain in charge of Iraq. If he falls, there's a good chance that the Kurds break off into their own country in the north, destabilizing our long-time ally Turkey. And there's a good chance the Shi'ite south also breaks off and becomes part of or an ally of Iran, putting the Iranians on the Kuwait border. Democracy is nice, but democracy in Iraq carries a severe risk to several long-term U.S. allies and to the economies of the democracies in North America, East Asia, and Europe.
Instead, the embargo leaves Saddam with enough power to keep his country united and defend itself from invasion, while rendering it unable to invade neighbors. Which is exactly what the U.S., EU, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Israel want.
Er, no. We just sold him arms when he was fighting Iran in the late Eighties. He seized power quite well on his own, and the Soviets provided him with arms and military advisors for his first fifteen years or so.
GSIII is great. Which is why I quit -- it was swallowing far too many hours of my time, and I couldn't seem to do it in moderation.
but as of right now most of the innovation of the past 50 years has been largely redundant in any measurable sense
Which is absolutely bullshit; because of the population growth allowed by the the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, the number of people who have died in all of human history is a smaller number than the number of humans alive today.
Stop and think about that. An innovation of the past 50 years is responsible for the existence of roughly one third of all humans who have ever lived in all of human history. Compared to that, things like the automobile and indoor plumbing have had only minimal impact.
It's amazing that nobody ever remembers the 1957 Kystym incident. I mean, it was only the second biggest nuclear disaster in history (after Chernobyl)...
1) Most colonization theories start with the assumption that there will be enough permafrost water close enough to the surface; if it isn't, there of course is a very serious problem
2) Experiments have already been done showing that plants can be grown in a greenhouse with an atmosphere the pressure of that on the surface of Mars. For heat purposes a greenhouse will be necessary, of course.
3) The same experiments that dealt with the pressure showed that you can get by with a mostly-CO2 atmosphere. Water vapor will have to be higher, but if you have the water you need in the first place, it won't be a problem.
4) It'll be a problem when the colonies get big enough. In the early stages, they'll have to import some fertilizer to supplement waste recycling along with everything else that has to be imported from Earth.
5) Nope, they won't grow as well as they would on Earth, but the plants can get by.
6) Actually, the Martian atmosphere is pretty decent when it comes to screening out UV and other ionizing radiation, in part because you're already starting at 1/4 intensity. The greenhouse will also help, with the result that the radiation really won't be important.
He takes inventions made in the 19th century (light bulb, AC power, automobiles, indoor plumbing) and counts them as 1900-1950 inventions because they were made generally available then, but counts inventions not made generally available until 1950-2000 (television, antibiotics) as 1900-1950 inventions if they were first created then.
Then, inventions from 1950-1980 (the Green Revolution, the word processor, the jet passenger plane, spacecraft, satellites) are not counted as "modern" innovations, despite the fact that the article starts by comparing 1900-1950 to 1950-2000.
Finally, older inventions like the telegraph are compared to modern ones like the Internet.
So, this guy gives us an argument that actually reads, "the inventions of 1830-1980 are more important as a group than the inventions of 1980-2000, so we've stopped innovating".
Wow, how profound. I can probably give a good argument that the inventions of 775-1830 AD (a time period similarly 7.5 times longer than the later period being compared to), including the transoceanic ship, the gun, classical physics, calculus, and the moveable-type printing press, were more important than the innovations from 1830-1980.
And, of course, the 7.5-times-longer time period from 7100 BC to 775 AD saw even more important innovation, seeing the invention of animal domestication, agriculture, the wheel, standing armies, writing, etc.
That's the best response you can come up with? I must be a shill because I'm capable of logical thought?
If somebody GMed a plant to reverse the genders of the plant parts, increase the yield by three orders of magnatude, render the plant unable to propagate naturally, radically change the chemical composition of the edible seeds, and change the growth cycle from one appropriate for the tropics to one suitable for Ohio, what would your response be?
That's what's been done by random mutation and human selection to tesonite, a wild grass native to southern Mexico. The hybrid mutants differ so radically that, until the advent of DNA testing, many botanists refused to believe they were in fact descended from tesonite.
This radicaly altered crop? Maize, a/k/a corn.
The problem here is that you have a view of the term "God" that drags in all the Judeo-Christio-Islamic baggage. But Zeus was a god-concept that was not a Creator, not omnipotent, not omnipresent, and not omniscient; none of those attributes are properly even implied by the term "God".
So this guy could merely believe in a God who just happens to know what DNA does and how it is sequenced. Creationism is not implied by his statement; you are inferring it based on your cultural assumptions.
Lemme get this straight --
If I carefully engineer a specific effect into the rice and have extensive oversight, you're opposed because I don't have long-term data. But if I take my rice and expose it to radiation, pick out the mutants, and crossbreed them, without oversight, you're okay with that.
Because, you do understand that all the crops in use in the world in all of history up to 1990 were created with the second method, right? And nobody does or ever has done any health studies to prove that a new variety is safe before making it generally available in those millenia of ad hoc mutation?
GM crops, because the changes aren't random, and because the changes are subject to scrutiny, is safer than the methods to create new crops for the last 10,000 years.
So do something useful, and protest against those dangerous, unsupervised non-GM crops, okay?
usually as the result of a school study and insistence
It's insane to allow one's children to attend grade school if there is any way to avoid it. The playground teaches mindless conformity to the peer group. Students are taught to blindly obey the dictates of authority figures. Ridiculous concepts of collective responsibility (where students ignorant of the identity of an anonymous troublemaker suffer because of the acts and feigned ignorance of others) are emphasized. Drugs are used to sedate children who aren't sufficiently controlled by the threat of punishment.
So what is our society doing? We're proposing extending it down to age 3, so we can brainwash the children ever earlier and simultaneously make it easier to put their mothers to work so they can make and buy more consumer crap...
Some day, we'll figure out a system that produces, say, eight adult humans for every ten children sent into it, instead of the current system that produces two vicious wolves, seven compliant sheep, and one human for every ten children put into it.
The beauty of the system is that if Congress chooses to act like a bunch of rednecks (like circa 1955), the Supreme Court can desegregrate schools with a courageous decision like Brown v. the Board of Education.
Maybe if stopped relying on White Power advocates like Rush Limburger for your "political wisdom" and took Political Science 101 you would stop spreading this FUD!!!
Given your apparent total ignorance of the facts of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas case, perhaps you should avoid casting aspersions?
Specifically, Congress was not involved in any way, shape, or form with the case. In Plessy v. Fergueson, the Supreme Court ruled that mandating separate accommodations was within the powers of the states. Congress was therefore, by Supreme Court ruling, powerless to end segregation in any state.
Actually, I'd argue that it's far more important that the books specifically be freely alterable, at least for the K-12 works. The current textbooks for those grades, from major publishers, are regualarly riddled with serious errors.
Worried that the historical text you download may have been altered by, say, Neo-Nazis? Certification marks from universities would give you as much assurance as you currently have with the textbook your kid brings home from school.