I'm not a climatologist but I, at one time, had acces to them. They disagreed with what you said. In fact, from a link in what I linked to (here) they seem to disagree with that also.
From what I was told, and have read elsewhere, temperatures around cities and such have increased alot - the issue is more with where the land based temperature stations are. In fact, as is stated in said link, there is still much argument as to which is more accurate.
Satallites are also used to measure atmospheric temperature, not land. NASA shows a temerature decrease over the globe in that data.
When I worked at a Oak Ridge National Labs I talked to the weather people from time to time (usually when they were running codes on our clusters) and they almost all universally pointed this out. Real scientists look at all the trends and are still arguing which is the most important to look at.
Even then, I agree with a few otehr posters here - it is mostly irrelevent. Emissions and such affect my health regardles of warming/colling or not. They need to be reduced - real reduction - not just shoving the emissions from an automobile to the power factory, allowing older plant to pollute at thier current level while being upgraded, all sorts of things. Many people who really care about the environment get their news from places that are poltical and use the environment because so many are emotional about it (thus allowing emotion to override reason).
Stupid shit like a bunch of the deadlock we have now. For example, old coal plants do not have to be upgraded as long as they aren't touched (grandfathered in). Old plants are ineffecient and pollute. Once touched they have to immediatly conform to new standards - they can not do this immediatly and are therefore not allowed to be touched. Since the newer plants run cheaper, power companies genereally want to do this, building new plants to replace the old are too expensive. Anytime legislation is proposed to do this it is recieved as "Allowing more pollution" and no support for it.
Similar thing until a few years ago with the EPA and sewer. A local town had an insufficient sewage system, sewage was leaking into the pristine river running through town. In order to contain the sewage it needed to be upgraded, in order to upgrade the sewage it had to be contained. The EPA people (from the mid 80's to 2000) had no problem with this, nor did the "environmentalist" around here because you couldn't "relax" sewage emissions. So a clean river will now take 50-60 years or more before someone will touch it because a bunch of people were more worried about how they felt about environment than actually about the environment.
On most environmental issues one of my favortie political statements is rarely truer: "You can not reason someone out of and idea that they didn't use reason to achieve"
No, that statement isn't sophistry. Believers or non believers can not prove their statements. The evidence used by both sides and thier arguments are generally sophistry, but the quoted statement is not. If it is not sophistry that "God doesn't exist" then you should be able to give clear proof that he doesn't - other wise you only think that there is no supreme being and can not make that strong a statement.
When you answer "Is there a god" with a "yes" or a "no" you HAVE to have evidence. It is the burden of proof on *both* for it to be undisputable fact.
Lack of evidence is not evidence - never has and never has been. If you took many science classes that should have been drilled into your head ("lack of proof" was usually one of the classic examples of sophistry). That is as strong as athiest can give. Last time I checked for a hypothesis to even be moved to theory you had to have positive evidence.
Take for example a perpetual motion machine. Why do world famous scientist still test the occasional one? Becuase while we have mounds of evidence (and even a few laws) all it will take is *one* to blow the whole thing out of the water. Science can say "With our current understanding it is impossible", or it can say "As far as we know it is impossible", but it CAN NOT say "A perpetual motion machine can never be produced". The few times in the past scientist have done that they have been proven wrong by someone doing it.
The same thing with God, though even weaker. There is no evidence that there is one or that there isn't one (or many). The facts of the situation fit both accounts (did the unexplained unique healing be such a rare process that we can not study it or did god intervene? Both theories fit the situation).
Same with your invisable rabbit - if I can not prove it isn't there how does it become scientific fact?
"What's the state of the art of proofs of parallelizability [and non-parallelizability]?"
Dunno, not really my area of expertise. I worked on infrastructure and do not deal so much with parallel algorithms.
"Is there a standard list of problems that have been proved to be non-parallelizable?"
Hmm, there are typically some problems that are listed that must be serial, though they are usually contrived. I doubt there are many full problems that are truly unparallelizable.
"Are there any problems that have been proved to be parallelizable, but for which no parallelizing algorithm has yet been discovered?"
Not that I know of. It is usually pretty obvious. If a calculations doesn't depend on something else being done first then it is parallelizable.
"Is there anything analogous to the NP-completeness conjecture in this field?"
Not that I know of. NP complete seems to be less of a cut and dry thing. Amdahl's law is probably as close as it gets. In my opinion parrallelism is more of a coding issue wheras NP completeness is more of a research issue (kinda like asking "is there anything proven to be able to be modeled by objects but no object model has been found"). But again, it is not really my area of expertise so take it with a grain of salt (though if you want to know some about scalable communications inside of clusters I can wear that topic out:) )
"re you spending skill points on knowledge skills to reflect all this studying your character is doing?"
If it is required to do so, then yes. But in more than several RPG's the points placed in the said skill represent "knowledge skills" (I put alot of weapon specialty feats into creating a weapons master in D&D, I would count that as a pretty good deal of study in the game world). What do I do if there are no "knowledge skills"?
"well, that explains why there is only one kind of pistol in the world. in reality some people like Sigs and some people like Glocks. A lot of the reasons they feel the way they do are abstract."
That is a stupid thing to say. Once more confusing the real world with a game world. If, as in a game word, a glock took on average two shots to kill and a sig took one (and everything else the same) you would be a moron to go into battle with the glock if you could afford the sig.
Even then, in the real world, there is typically one weapon that best fits a given situation - it is why when you go see military men who choose thier weapons they all have almost the same thing (go check out special forces knives, I will bet you will see almost totally randalls).
In the game world there is not the choices we have in the real, they are much more limited. As such there is typically going to be only a few (and probably one) weapon that allows each person to do thier job most effeciently. Even in a few cases the real world mirrors that.
"It's also inherent in the process of adding a mechanic that it will be possible to statistically analyze it and find key points with which to min/max a character. life isnt really codified so conveniently."
Many times it is. Why do you think that most militarys use something around a 30 caliber for any long range light fire? Why are 45's and 10mm so popular in a pistol? Why do most trench gun cartridges have similar dimensions/ballistics? Why do many high performance jets have *very* similar parts? Because we long ago found what the best statistically design for the job. There are minor variances but over all they are quite similar. The difference between a glock 10mm and a sig 10mm are VERY small. In fact they would be so small you probably could not model it. They would be classed as a "10mm semi-automatic". If it makes you feel better with the halberd look at some as being "Bergers", some "Donburrys", and some "Fleshmans" - then you have you variety like a glock vs a sig (and you have an added dimension of roleplaying)!
You are basically quoting Amdahl's law (you may know that, but it should be pointed out in case anyone who doesn't know wants to look it up). Though his machines run into the same problem, if the program can not be broken into little concurrent chunks then having 1024 processors isn't going to help either.
When I worked at Oak Ridge National Labs there were several applications that people ran on our clusters that were serious computations. Very few of the people there really cared one way or another if it was on the IBM SP-2 or on the intel clusters, just run on the hardware that has the shortest runtime.
We generally got well over 8% utliization, if that was all you were getting then you were not managing the cluster well. Basically both machines had similar problems, if one piece of software only utilized 10% of the machine (and that is possible, even probable, in either world) then you ran more than one person - they did it and so did we. It was rare a single person got exclusive use of the machines (they either shared on each individual node or the over all machine was split into smaller clusters/supercomputers). The lines between the two are very blurry, but of course Cray wants you to think differently.
This article is just like one of the researchers there that ran the Big Iron stuff. When I was still an intern I overheard him telling the new director about how clusters sucked because they cost so much more in salaries to maintain. While true, he overlooked that thier service contract with IBM cost more than triple what it would cost us to replace the whole cluster per year and hire four full time people to manage them, and they never got any hardware upgrades for it.
Each has thier strong points and weaknesses, and never trust someone who is trying to sell you something to give the full story.
"Of course, you will get mention in the article if it gets published."
10 pages of article, 300 pages of contributors listed as e-mail addresses and slasdhot ID's:)
I rather suspect that none of the smaller contributors will get mentioned in the article (probably the largest installations will). I would guess that a link with contributors will be given.
"I think you missed my point on the halberd. Its not a general purpose fighting weapon."
Says who? In our world? Sure. But in the game world you are playing the stats determine when and where something is useful. If a halberd was not useful in a field then it would have penalties. As such I would say that halberds, like magic, do not function exactly the same there as here. Unless you are roleplaying a psychotic person who thinks their reality is based on another world I would have to say that you are not remaining faithful to that world.
"How exactly is using it on the field a good idea?"
Well, if it didn't work well in that situation the game rules should take care of that shouldn't it? As such in the make believe world of where you are talking it works quite well in the field. How is it a bad idea if it is the most effective killing impliment.
"If you would put yourself into that role I think you would understand that in general field usage you would get killed very quickly."
So, if I played this mythical character and put him in this role he would have to think "Well, I could slay many people in the field of battle with this mighty halberd. But in another world I know nothing about it will not work so I will use this rusty sword!!!" How is that accurate role playing?
"If you put yourself into the role of a master of fighting prowess, for example, I would expect you to more likely pick a weapon that is more general purpose."
Actually I tend to pick whichever weapon I could kill with easiest. Since, at that time, the halberd was obviously the best tech in that world I would use it.
" A powergamer picks it because a simplistic game world gives it more points of damage"
This is correct. A powergamer can still roleplay. I can look at tables to figure which spell will kill the best based on damage. That does not mean that I can not roleplay as a researcher of effecient killings by reading various texts on the effectiveness of weapons and choose accordingly. It would be foolish to think that anyone that thier life depends on thier equipment qould choose anything other than the best available weapon and exercise program (in any world, real or make believe). Since those points represent reality in that game world it is a good place to look. If you wish to use the real world you have to look no further than our own wars - most everybody has the same weapons (except for the specialised troops) and it was the best combination of cheap/killing power at that time in history - exactly what you are bemoaning in said game.
Now, the most telling thing about what you have written is that you constantly use a form of "If you think like I do" and guess what, not everyone does. Just because you do not like said role (or would not play it the same as another person) doesn't mean it isn't roleplaying. I am certain that there will be quite a few people that do not like your methods (and, given that you are using the real world to base what a weapon is good for I would say that I am one of those individuals).
Ultimatly you are making no distinction between a powergamer and a munchkin. A munchkin is one that is strickly min/max best weapons and no role playing.
While I realise that you didn't say this (more of a response to the grandparent with your comment being important), in this case linux is getting "security through obscurity".
If most people ran XP in the multi-user environemnt and only ran as a lowly user things would work much better. I can't say that i do (but then I run Linux in superuser mode mostly since I write sysadmin code - every window open is SU anyway). But then I am quite careful about what I run - I've never gotten a virus since the early 90's (knock on wood) on any computer I have ran - nor have I been hacked as I try and apply/test the most current patches to the best of my abilities. Any of my families computers that I run, they run as plain users without the ability to be stupid, only OS problems creep in.
Should Linux hit the mainstream desktop you will see millions of root users on the net, each downloading and installing crap and hitting "yes", running attachments they shouldn't, and a myriad other things. The main problem here is users mostly. That is not to say that Microsoft doesn't share blame (or even shoulder it entirely in some cases) but in this case it is purely a stupid user and is OS independant.
I probably hate microsoft as much as the next person here (but since my home machine is mainly gaming I still use it - now emulators work well enough yet for every game I want to play) I do not see that false accusations help anything. If it is a Stupid User (TM) that is responsible, not the OS, then Linux, windows, BeOS, anything isn't going to solve it.
The first place anyone *must* hit to get adoption is at the workplace as people HAVE to learn work and home follows. While MSCE's may not be the greatest (or they may - I know some who are brilliant but want the jobs) they know enough to reconise FUD. Linux FUD isn't any tastier than Windows FUD. If you propose adoption to solve issues, and it doesn't solve them, you loose credibility. Linux has *many* *many* winning points - no reason to add ones that do not exist.
From your username I am assuming non-american (it sounds like a scandanavian name, but what the heck do I know about it).
In the US we have the taxes, to keep drinking down and pay for medical bills (though somehow the money never seems to make it there). We are allowed to produce our own alchohol in the form of plain fermented anything - though there is a yearly limit (For the life of me I can't figure out how they know the amount of alchohol I have produced in a year so I don't pay any attention to it, and no it is a yearly production not amount on hand). But then we are not allowed to distill it, well just because. No reason given, just can't. Not even allowed to posess a distiller of more than one gallon and it is only to be used for water in emergencies (I guess a family of four or five only needs one gallon to live on).
Yes, that's right. I can drink enough of my own beer/wine to get alchohol poisoning but heaven forbid I change it to a different form that I can get drunk off of.
"Cable providers' bandwidth limits are purely marketing-driven, and don't come anywhere near the physical limits of the cable connection."
Not entierly true (or at least it used to not be). I know there were places in the country (mostly California and New York with extremely high population density) where cable fell between dialup and ISDN - I knew a few people who claimed dialup speed. I do not know if that is still the case but do not think it is. Living in fairly rural east Tennessee I've pretty much always been about the only person in my area having cable. I used to get, and after some recent uncapping by the cable provider get again, insane downstream throughput.
Basically there was a certain amount of a shared resource.
I explained it as such: You have a highway running into your house. The speed limit is 600 mph but it only has one lane. If you have 10,000 cars wanting to go on it you may get 600 mph per car but you have to wait until your turn (latency kills you). If there is one car on the higway you get 600 mph all you want whenever you want.
DSL was a one line one car 400 mph highway, cable was a 600 mph as many cars as you want on the highway.
Is this still the case? Dunno, haven't really cared in quite a while. I suspect, based on the speed that I get, that it is no longer the case. If it is, then they have restructured the network to keep speeds up (though I still live in east tennessee so I don't know what Cali does now, I know I have not seen any of the complaints I used to constantly see back then). This was the mid/late 1990's when I was itnerested in the stuff.
I suspect the parent poster was using the same knowledge that I was above.
It is also possible that there is no current solution. Especially given that the sattelite was launched in 1967 I doubt they even in a position to know what the future problems would be. In fact they may have thought that plunging into the atmosphere was a good way of disposing the sattelite
Grabbing the debris with a space shuttle right now (and in the time frame before it become dangerous) isn't going to politically fly. Not sure how much I agree with it given that the *should* be safe but the recent explosion doesn't really instill confidence. I don't know if any other countries orbiter has the capability to do it.
While I agree we have *many* shortsighted push it off to our great-great-grandchildren this may not be the case. If it can safely be pushed off until a good solution (not just a solution) is found then that may be the best answer. Without more information I wouldn't rule out either reason.
There is also a difference between having the suns radiation hit your skin and breathing radioactive material that bond to the calcium in your bones delivering a 24/7 does of radiation to a single spot.
You can stand on a floor of strontium 90 every day and not really be affected (well, I think there are parts of your skin thin enough that the radiation will cause problems), breath a few particles of it and some Bad Things will happen.
I think the stuff talked about here make strontium 90 look good. Some of that stuff takes VERY little though yellow and magenta chains grant immunity to radiation (Ok, inside joke, govt labs use yellow and magenta plastic chains to rope off radioactive areas with no other explaination leaving you wondering what the actual contamination is from. Nothing like a 2 foot square hole in the hall in front of your office with one of those chains around the very edge of the hole).
In fact, that same chart will show you that most people's taxes were actually lower in 2000
Hmm, you may want to check the data you linked to (I had ditfully transcribed it but apparently too many numbers triggers slashdots lameness filter *shrug*):
As for the average tax rate (average rate you pay for each dollar in a tiered tax system such as the one the US has), correct me if I am wrong but 7.54% is less than 10.58%, 14.36% is less than 15.67%, and 20.33% is less than 20.90%.
Those are the numbers I get if I follow the yearly rows for 2001 vs 2000. It seems you are paying less in 2001 vs 2002.
The only place you payed more is on your marginal tax rate (Marginal tax rate is the tax rate on the last dollar you pay taxes on - that is the highest rate you qualify for) if you make half the median income. I would bet that has more to do with moving into a higher tax bracket than anything (median income changes each year, typically so do where the brackets are placed). If that marginal tax rate is on the last 300 dollars of income it's not very relevant.
By your link the last time the 1/2 median income people payed that little tax was 1967 (mostly in the 12's and 13's so 7 is a good deal different), median income 1974 (stays a little under 17 mostly, once more 14 percent is a signifigant amount of money when talking yearly income), and double median income 1998 (it fluctuates from 20 to about 21 from 1978 on). Most would consider that to be different from virtually unchanged since 1980.
So where do you get taxes rose in 2001 vs 2000? Heck income rose and tax rate went down, that meets most peoples definition of "more money in my pocket" or "less payed in taxes"
This is the greatest lubricating oil ever made (well, at least industrial lubrication like WD40 that is).
I'm actually being serious here on the greatness of it (along with the bit of humor). We use it on almost any metal-to-metal moving parts we own. From guns to the inkjet plotter. It beats 3-in-one oil, WD40, REMOIL, anything we have ever used. I have literally had rusted bolts that with wd40 or remoil I could not remove with a torque-wrench and the kroil allowed removal with *finger* pressure - no exageration. Purchase some now - you will NOT be disappointed.
"Second, there are enough geeks who have varried interests in firepower. There's ESR and his "Geeks with guns". There's all of the crazy flamethrowers, flame cannons, high voltage tesla coils, etc. from the burner contingent."
You say that as if the two sets are disjoint. My combustion potato cannons (metered MAPP gass with electric ignition) and firecraker shotgun rounds say they are not.
Also need to add archery into the mix, up to 90 meters accurately and QUIET:)
I tend to agree with legalising marijuana but quoting that stuff isn't helping your cause.
First, few are going to believe it. Do you honestly believe that aspirin would kill more people than marijuana if the number using it was the same? You can't compare straight numbers if one has 500 times the amount of people using it. Those that go "hell yea" to it are believers anyway.
Second, if any one digs into the quoted numbers, you will find that the study was in 1987-1988 and dealt with *medical* marijuana with the others collated from *non-medical* abuse.
This is like picking the pot-heads that can't string a coherent sentance together and wear dyed twine clothes to promote it's usage - not gonna get sympathy.
In short, pick statistics and people that will not get easily torn up.
Geek isn't defined as counter-culture. Geek is a mindset. The whole world could be full of geeks. Nerds are the same thing.
I garuntee I can totally geek out over my power tools yet most homes have many of the same ones I do. I would say that a solar powered high torque high speed power drill qould be geek news, much as power alternative cars - or heck even a really technologically advanced gasoline car.
In my experiences geeks/nerds do what they do because they like it - who gives a damn if everyone else likes it to? It just so happens that mainstream culture doesn't do the same thing. I, and I think the vast majority of geeks, would never change what I/they like based on others opinion.
In fact I would argue that if you are only/mainly doing these things because "mainstram culture" doesn't do them you are not much of a geek. You are letting mainstream culture dictate your actions - not passionatly doing something that you love be damned everyone else.
" I personally don't like the idea of getting over an emotional trauma by 'desensitizing' myself to it,"
Well, I would say that depends on what the emotional trauma is.
If it is fear of open spaces you should learn to cope with it. If it is being daily anally raped by a family member it is best to stop it, not become desensitised to it.
"Maybe I'm being sentimental, but it seems to me that what allows us to grow from painful experiences is having to come to terms with them, not getting desensitized."
To a certain extend the two are the same. To used the afore mentioned example, one is something that you will need to be exposed to everyday. Being in wide open spaces is a natural occurence and learning to come to terms with it is mostly being desensitized to it, many social experiences are simply thigs we have to get used to. In the case of being daily raped the solution is to stop it and come to terms with it and it never occuring again. Very different solutions and treatments. I would GREATLY question (read condemn) any treatment for physical abuse that required repeated virtual beatings, but think that desinsitizing people to who are afraid of heights using virtual heights as an OK thing.
While I can not think of any right now I am sure that there are a few cases that are not as clear cut as the ones I mentioned.
" And please, lets start using RF instead of IR. I'm sick of pointing my remote. Yes I'm that lazy."
I don't think that is lazy, but good design. Many times it takes quite a wrist contortion to point the remote correctly, and lord help anyone whose batteries are low or has something blocking the line of sight. I don't have near the trouble with a keyboard that I do with the remote, yet when one says something about the remote the response is generally "walk to the TV stupid" - yea big help there. Like occasionaly getting out of the chair and stressing cold muscels doesn't cause MUCH of the back problems we see today. And keyboards get a lot of attention.
I've had wrist injuries and had issues with pointing any remotes and had to switch hands (even had my right shoulder hurt trying to point the remote whith an injured wrist back when I lived in a dorm). This generally causes left wrist issues as it is continual motion it is not accustomed to. I imagine the repeated pointing of the device contributes a good deal to different repetitive stress syndromes.
While the remote isn't really that big a part of RPS problems it is something that should be VERY easy to fix but none of the better designs get picked up. Cheap easy fix for a minor problem - good cost benefit analysis.
"Maybe this is because under capitalism every decision is a compromise between rival power structures, while good engineering is an open discource between co-operating equals? (Compare Windows vs. Open Source)"
Or maybe because the soviets do not see as many issues with thier spacecraft failing, nor do they get the usage that our spacecraft do. No, those couldn't be an issue....
"A moon base or space elevator would be infinitely more useful than a space station."
Well, I agree 100% there. Unfortunatly this is like saying "zero emmesion unlimited power is much more useful than what we now use".
I am sure that more than just NASA would LOVE to have said elevator. I am also sure they would like a permament moon base. Those are currently either impossible or the cost is so prohibitive to be impossible. Though I am betting that a moon base is MUCH more expensive than the ISS as you have many more variables and more more gravity to overcome, though it is probably more usefull.
As is, if a permament space platform is wanted (not needed as it is currently not - and yes I agree with the funding and think it ought to be raised - I'm not knocking space exploration in that statement) then the ISS is probably the best mix of possibility and funding. But the best may not be a easily workable solution.
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I'm not a climatologist but I, at one time, had acces to them. They disagreed with what you said. In fact, from a link in what I linked to (here) they seem to disagree with that also.
From what I was told, and have read elsewhere, temperatures around cities and such have increased alot - the issue is more with where the land based temperature stations are. In fact, as is stated in said link, there is still much argument as to which is more accurate.
Here shows some stallite atmospheric data that shows a cooling trend.
So, which one to believe is the "true" measure of our global climate?
Bad reporting - or selective reporting.
Satallites are also used to measure atmospheric temperature, not land. NASA shows a temerature decrease over the globe in that data.
When I worked at a Oak Ridge National Labs I talked to the weather people from time to time (usually when they were running codes on our clusters) and they almost all universally pointed this out. Real scientists look at all the trends and are still arguing which is the most important to look at.
Even then, I agree with a few otehr posters here - it is mostly irrelevent. Emissions and such affect my health regardles of warming/colling or not. They need to be reduced - real reduction - not just shoving the emissions from an automobile to the power factory, allowing older plant to pollute at thier current level while being upgraded, all sorts of things. Many people who really care about the environment get their news from places that are poltical and use the environment because so many are emotional about it (thus allowing emotion to override reason).
Stupid shit like a bunch of the deadlock we have now. For example, old coal plants do not have to be upgraded as long as they aren't touched (grandfathered in). Old plants are ineffecient and pollute. Once touched they have to immediatly conform to new standards - they can not do this immediatly and are therefore not allowed to be touched. Since the newer plants run cheaper, power companies genereally want to do this, building new plants to replace the old are too expensive. Anytime legislation is proposed to do this it is recieved as "Allowing more pollution" and no support for it.
Similar thing until a few years ago with the EPA and sewer. A local town had an insufficient sewage system, sewage was leaking into the pristine river running through town. In order to contain the sewage it needed to be upgraded, in order to upgrade the sewage it had to be contained. The EPA people (from the mid 80's to 2000) had no problem with this, nor did the "environmentalist" around here because you couldn't "relax" sewage emissions. So a clean river will now take 50-60 years or more before someone will touch it because a bunch of people were more worried about how they felt about environment than actually about the environment.
On most environmental issues one of my favortie political statements is rarely truer: "You can not reason someone out of and idea that they didn't use reason to achieve"
No, that statement isn't sophistry. Believers or non believers can not prove their statements. The evidence used by both sides and thier arguments are generally sophistry, but the quoted statement is not. If it is not sophistry that "God doesn't exist" then you should be able to give clear proof that he doesn't - other wise you only think that there is no supreme being and can not make that strong a statement.
When you answer "Is there a god" with a "yes" or a "no" you HAVE to have evidence. It is the burden of proof on *both* for it to be undisputable fact.
Lack of evidence is not evidence - never has and never has been. If you took many science classes that should have been drilled into your head ("lack of proof" was usually one of the classic examples of sophistry). That is as strong as athiest can give. Last time I checked for a hypothesis to even be moved to theory you had to have positive evidence.
Take for example a perpetual motion machine. Why do world famous scientist still test the occasional one? Becuase while we have mounds of evidence (and even a few laws) all it will take is *one* to blow the whole thing out of the water. Science can say "With our current understanding it is impossible", or it can say "As far as we know it is impossible", but it CAN NOT say "A perpetual motion machine can never be produced". The few times in the past scientist have done that they have been proven wrong by someone doing it.
The same thing with God, though even weaker. There is no evidence that there is one or that there isn't one (or many). The facts of the situation fit both accounts (did the unexplained unique healing be such a rare process that we can not study it or did god intervene? Both theories fit the situation).
Same with your invisable rabbit - if I can not prove it isn't there how does it become scientific fact?
"What's the state of the art of proofs of parallelizability [and non-parallelizability]?"
:) )
Dunno, not really my area of expertise. I worked on infrastructure and do not deal so much with parallel algorithms.
"Is there a standard list of problems that have been proved to be non-parallelizable?"
Hmm, there are typically some problems that are listed that must be serial, though they are usually contrived. I doubt there are many full problems that are truly unparallelizable.
"Are there any problems that have been proved to be parallelizable, but for which no parallelizing algorithm has yet been discovered?"
Not that I know of. It is usually pretty obvious. If a calculations doesn't depend on something else being done first then it is parallelizable.
"Is there anything analogous to the NP-completeness conjecture in this field?"
Not that I know of. NP complete seems to be less of a cut and dry thing. Amdahl's law is probably as close as it gets. In my opinion parrallelism is more of a coding issue wheras NP completeness is more of a research issue (kinda like asking "is there anything proven to be able to be modeled by objects but no object model has been found"). But again, it is not really my area of expertise so take it with a grain of salt (though if you want to know some about scalable communications inside of clusters I can wear that topic out
"re you spending skill points on knowledge skills to reflect all this studying your character is doing?"
If it is required to do so, then yes. But in more than several RPG's the points placed in the said skill represent "knowledge skills" (I put alot of weapon specialty feats into creating a weapons master in D&D, I would count that as a pretty good deal of study in the game world). What do I do if there are no "knowledge skills"?
"well, that explains why there is only one kind of pistol in the world.
in reality some people like Sigs and some people like Glocks. A lot of the reasons they feel the way they do are abstract."
That is a stupid thing to say. Once more confusing the real world with a game world. If, as in a game word, a glock took on average two shots to kill and a sig took one (and everything else the same) you would be a moron to go into battle with the glock if you could afford the sig.
Even then, in the real world, there is typically one weapon that best fits a given situation - it is why when you go see military men who choose thier weapons they all have almost the same thing (go check out special forces knives, I will bet you will see almost totally randalls).
In the game world there is not the choices we have in the real, they are much more limited. As such there is typically going to be only a few (and probably one) weapon that allows each person to do thier job most effeciently. Even in a few cases the real world mirrors that.
"It's also inherent in the process of adding a mechanic that it will be possible to statistically analyze it and find key points with which to min/max a character. life isnt really codified so conveniently."
Many times it is. Why do you think that most militarys use something around a 30 caliber for any long range light fire? Why are 45's and 10mm so popular in a pistol? Why do most trench gun cartridges have similar dimensions/ballistics? Why do many high performance jets have *very* similar parts? Because we long ago found what the best statistically design for the job. There are minor variances but over all they are quite similar. The difference between a glock 10mm and a sig 10mm are VERY small. In fact they would be so small you probably could not model it. They would be classed as a "10mm semi-automatic". If it makes you feel better with the halberd look at some as being "Bergers", some "Donburrys", and some "Fleshmans" - then you have you variety like a glock vs a sig (and you have an added dimension of roleplaying)!
You are basically quoting Amdahl's law (you may know that, but it should be pointed out in case anyone who doesn't know wants to look it up). Though his machines run into the same problem, if the program can not be broken into little concurrent chunks then having 1024 processors isn't going to help either.
When I worked at Oak Ridge National Labs there were several applications that people ran on our clusters that were serious computations. Very few of the people there really cared one way or another if it was on the IBM SP-2 or on the intel clusters, just run on the hardware that has the shortest runtime.
We generally got well over 8% utliization, if that was all you were getting then you were not managing the cluster well. Basically both machines had similar problems, if one piece of software only utilized 10% of the machine (and that is possible, even probable, in either world) then you ran more than one person - they did it and so did we. It was rare a single person got exclusive use of the machines (they either shared on each individual node or the over all machine was split into smaller clusters/supercomputers). The lines between the two are very blurry, but of course Cray wants you to think differently.
This article is just like one of the researchers there that ran the Big Iron stuff. When I was still an intern I overheard him telling the new director about how clusters sucked because they cost so much more in salaries to maintain. While true, he overlooked that thier service contract with IBM cost more than triple what it would cost us to replace the whole cluster per year and hire four full time people to manage them, and they never got any hardware upgrades for it.
Each has thier strong points and weaknesses, and never trust someone who is trying to sell you something to give the full story.
"Of course, you will get mention in the article if it gets published."
:)
10 pages of article, 300 pages of contributors listed as e-mail addresses and slasdhot ID's
I rather suspect that none of the smaller contributors will get mentioned in the article (probably the largest installations will). I would guess that a link with contributors will be given.
"I think you missed my point on the halberd. Its not a general purpose fighting weapon."
Says who? In our world? Sure. But in the game world you are playing the stats determine when and where something is useful. If a halberd was not useful in a field then it would have penalties. As such I would say that halberds, like magic, do not function exactly the same there as here. Unless you are roleplaying a psychotic person who thinks their reality is based on another world I would have to say that you are not remaining faithful to that world.
"How exactly is using it on the field a good idea?"
Well, if it didn't work well in that situation the game rules should take care of that shouldn't it? As such in the make believe world of where you are talking it works quite well in the field. How is it a bad idea if it is the most effective killing impliment.
"If you would put yourself into that role I think you would understand that in general field usage you would get killed very quickly."
So, if I played this mythical character and put him in this role he would have to think "Well, I could slay many people in the field of battle with this mighty halberd. But in another world I know nothing about it will not work so I will use this rusty sword!!!" How is that accurate role playing?
"If you put yourself into the role of a master of fighting prowess, for example, I would expect you to more likely pick a weapon that is more general purpose."
Actually I tend to pick whichever weapon I could kill with easiest. Since, at that time, the halberd was obviously the best tech in that world I would use it.
" A powergamer picks it because a simplistic game world gives it more points of damage"
This is correct. A powergamer can still roleplay. I can look at tables to figure which spell will kill the best based on damage. That does not mean that I can not roleplay as a researcher of effecient killings by reading various texts on the effectiveness of weapons and choose accordingly. It would be foolish to think that anyone that thier life depends on thier equipment qould choose anything other than the best available weapon and exercise program (in any world, real or make believe). Since those points represent reality in that game world it is a good place to look. If you wish to use the real world you have to look no further than our own wars - most everybody has the same weapons (except for the specialised troops) and it was the best combination of cheap/killing power at that time in history - exactly what you are bemoaning in said game.
Now, the most telling thing about what you have written is that you constantly use a form of "If you think like I do" and guess what, not everyone does. Just because you do not like said role (or would not play it the same as another person) doesn't mean it isn't roleplaying. I am certain that there will be quite a few people that do not like your methods (and, given that you are using the real world to base what a weapon is good for I would say that I am one of those individuals).
Ultimatly you are making no distinction between a powergamer and a munchkin. A munchkin is one that is strickly min/max best weapons and no role playing.
While I realise that you didn't say this (more of a response to the grandparent with your comment being important), in this case linux is getting "security through obscurity".
If most people ran XP in the multi-user environemnt and only ran as a lowly user things would work much better. I can't say that i do (but then I run Linux in superuser mode mostly since I write sysadmin code - every window open is SU anyway). But then I am quite careful about what I run - I've never gotten a virus since the early 90's (knock on wood) on any computer I have ran - nor have I been hacked as I try and apply/test the most current patches to the best of my abilities. Any of my families computers that I run, they run as plain users without the ability to be stupid, only OS problems creep in.
Should Linux hit the mainstream desktop you will see millions of root users on the net, each downloading and installing crap and hitting "yes", running attachments they shouldn't, and a myriad other things. The main problem here is users mostly. That is not to say that Microsoft doesn't share blame (or even shoulder it entirely in some cases) but in this case it is purely a stupid user and is OS independant.
I probably hate microsoft as much as the next person here (but since my home machine is mainly gaming I still use it - now emulators work well enough yet for every game I want to play) I do not see that false accusations help anything. If it is a Stupid User (TM) that is responsible, not the OS, then Linux, windows, BeOS, anything isn't going to solve it.
The first place anyone *must* hit to get adoption is at the workplace as people HAVE to learn work and home follows. While MSCE's may not be the greatest (or they may - I know some who are brilliant but want the jobs) they know enough to reconise FUD. Linux FUD isn't any tastier than Windows FUD. If you propose adoption to solve issues, and it doesn't solve them, you loose credibility. Linux has *many* *many* winning points - no reason to add ones that do not exist.
From your username I am assuming non-american (it sounds like a scandanavian name, but what the heck do I know about it).
In the US we have the taxes, to keep drinking down and pay for medical bills (though somehow the money never seems to make it there). We are allowed to produce our own alchohol in the form of plain fermented anything - though there is a yearly limit (For the life of me I can't figure out how they know the amount of alchohol I have produced in a year so I don't pay any attention to it, and no it is a yearly production not amount on hand). But then we are not allowed to distill it, well just because. No reason given, just can't. Not even allowed to posess a distiller of more than one gallon and it is only to be used for water in emergencies (I guess a family of four or five only needs one gallon to live on).
Yes, that's right. I can drink enough of my own beer/wine to get alchohol poisoning but heaven forbid I change it to a different form that I can get drunk off of.
"Cable providers' bandwidth limits are purely marketing-driven, and don't come anywhere near the physical limits of the cable connection."
Not entierly true (or at least it used to not be). I know there were places in the country (mostly California and New York with extremely high population density) where cable fell between dialup and ISDN - I knew a few people who claimed dialup speed. I do not know if that is still the case but do not think it is. Living in fairly rural east Tennessee I've pretty much always been about the only person in my area having cable. I used to get, and after some recent uncapping by the cable provider get again, insane downstream throughput.
Basically there was a certain amount of a shared resource.
I explained it as such: You have a highway running into your house. The speed limit is 600 mph but it only has one lane. If you have 10,000 cars wanting to go on it you may get 600 mph per car but you have to wait until your turn (latency kills you). If there is one car on the higway you get 600 mph all you want whenever you want.
DSL was a one line one car 400 mph highway, cable was a 600 mph as many cars as you want on the highway.
Is this still the case? Dunno, haven't really cared in quite a while. I suspect, based on the speed that I get, that it is no longer the case. If it is, then they have restructured the network to keep speeds up (though I still live in east tennessee so I don't know what Cali does now, I know I have not seen any of the complaints I used to constantly see back then). This was the mid/late 1990's when I was itnerested in the stuff.
I suspect the parent poster was using the same knowledge that I was above.
It is also possible that there is no current solution. Especially given that the sattelite was launched in 1967 I doubt they even in a position to know what the future problems would be. In fact they may have thought that plunging into the atmosphere was a good way of disposing the sattelite
Grabbing the debris with a space shuttle right now (and in the time frame before it become dangerous) isn't going to politically fly. Not sure how much I agree with it given that the *should* be safe but the recent explosion doesn't really instill confidence. I don't know if any other countries orbiter has the capability to do it.
While I agree we have *many* shortsighted push it off to our great-great-grandchildren this may not be the case. If it can safely be pushed off until a good solution (not just a solution) is found then that may be the best answer. Without more information I wouldn't rule out either reason.
There is also a difference between having the suns radiation hit your skin and breathing radioactive material that bond to the calcium in your bones delivering a 24/7 does of radiation to a single spot.
You can stand on a floor of strontium 90 every day and not really be affected (well, I think there are parts of your skin thin enough that the radiation will cause problems), breath a few particles of it and some Bad Things will happen.
I think the stuff talked about here make strontium 90 look good. Some of that stuff takes VERY little though yellow and magenta chains grant immunity to radiation (Ok, inside joke, govt labs use yellow and magenta plastic chains to rope off radioactive areas with no other explaination leaving you wondering what the actual contamination is from. Nothing like a 2 foot square hole in the hall in front of your office with one of those chains around the very edge of the hole).
"but as he explicitly said, 1992 to 2000."
Ahh, sorry, I thought he said 2000 vs 2001 (he was complaining about Bush so I read what I expected to see I guess).
Though the drops correspond to a republican congress also.
In fact, that same chart will show you that most people's taxes were actually lower in 2000
Hmm, you may want to check the data you linked to (I had ditfully transcribed it but apparently too many numbers triggers slashdots lameness filter *shrug*):
As for the average tax rate (average rate you pay for each dollar in a tiered tax system such as the one the US has), correct me if I am wrong but 7.54% is less than 10.58%, 14.36% is less than 15.67%, and 20.33% is less than 20.90%.
Those are the numbers I get if I follow the yearly rows for 2001 vs 2000. It seems you are paying less in 2001 vs 2002.
The only place you payed more is on your marginal tax rate (Marginal tax rate is the tax rate on the last dollar you pay taxes on - that is the highest rate you qualify for) if you make half the median income. I would bet that has more to do with moving into a higher tax bracket than anything (median income changes each year, typically so do where the brackets are placed). If that marginal tax rate is on the last 300 dollars of income it's not very relevant.
By your link the last time the 1/2 median income people payed that little tax was 1967 (mostly in the 12's and 13's so 7 is a good deal different), median income 1974 (stays a little under 17 mostly, once more 14 percent is a signifigant amount of money when talking yearly income), and double median income 1998 (it fluctuates from 20 to about 21 from 1978 on). Most would consider that to be different from virtually unchanged since 1980.
So where do you get taxes rose in 2001 vs 2000? Heck income rose and tax rate went down, that meets most peoples definition of "more money in my pocket" or "less payed in taxes"
A "real" geek would use kroil
:)
This is the greatest lubricating oil ever made (well, at least industrial lubrication like WD40 that is).
I'm actually being serious here on the greatness of it (along with the bit of humor). We use it on almost any metal-to-metal moving parts we own. From guns to the inkjet plotter. It beats 3-in-one oil, WD40, REMOIL, anything we have ever used. I have literally had rusted bolts that with wd40 or remoil I could not remove with a torque-wrench and the kroil allowed removal with *finger* pressure - no exageration. Purchase some now - you will NOT be disappointed.
Duct tape, OTOH, has no equal
"Second, there are enough geeks who have varried interests in firepower. There's ESR and his "Geeks with guns". There's all of the crazy flamethrowers, flame cannons, high voltage tesla coils, etc. from the burner contingent."
:)
You say that as if the two sets are disjoint. My combustion potato cannons (metered MAPP gass with electric ignition) and firecraker shotgun rounds say they are not.
Also need to add archery into the mix, up to 90 meters accurately and QUIET
I tend to agree with legalising marijuana but quoting that stuff isn't helping your cause.
First, few are going to believe it. Do you honestly believe that aspirin would kill more people than marijuana if the number using it was the same? You can't compare straight numbers if one has 500 times the amount of people using it. Those that go "hell yea" to it are believers anyway.
Second, if any one digs into the quoted numbers, you will find that the study was in 1987-1988 and dealt with *medical* marijuana with the others collated from *non-medical* abuse.
This is like picking the pot-heads that can't string a coherent sentance together and wear dyed twine clothes to promote it's usage - not gonna get sympathy.
In short, pick statistics and people that will not get easily torn up.
Geek isn't defined as counter-culture. Geek is a mindset. The whole world could be full of geeks. Nerds are the same thing.
I garuntee I can totally geek out over my power tools yet most homes have many of the same ones I do. I would say that a solar powered high torque high speed power drill qould be geek news, much as power alternative cars - or heck even a really technologically advanced gasoline car.
In my experiences geeks/nerds do what they do because they like it - who gives a damn if everyone else likes it to? It just so happens that mainstream culture doesn't do the same thing. I, and I think the vast majority of geeks, would never change what I/they like based on others opinion.
In fact I would argue that if you are only/mainly doing these things because "mainstram culture" doesn't do them you are not much of a geek. You are letting mainstream culture dictate your actions - not passionatly doing something that you love be damned everyone else.
" I personally don't like the idea of getting over an emotional trauma by 'desensitizing' myself to it,"
Well, I would say that depends on what the emotional trauma is.
If it is fear of open spaces you should learn to cope with it. If it is being daily anally raped by a family member it is best to stop it, not become desensitised to it.
"Maybe I'm being sentimental, but it seems to me that what allows us to grow from painful experiences is having to come to terms with them, not getting desensitized."
To a certain extend the two are the same. To used the afore mentioned example, one is something that you will need to be exposed to everyday. Being in wide open spaces is a natural occurence and learning to come to terms with it is mostly being desensitized to it, many social experiences are simply thigs we have to get used to. In the case of being daily raped the solution is to stop it and come to terms with it and it never occuring again. Very different solutions and treatments. I would GREATLY question (read condemn) any treatment for physical abuse that required repeated virtual beatings, but think that desinsitizing people to who are afraid of heights using virtual heights as an OK thing.
While I can not think of any right now I am sure that there are a few cases that are not as clear cut as the ones I mentioned.
" And please, lets start using RF instead of IR. I'm sick of pointing my remote. Yes I'm that lazy."
I don't think that is lazy, but good design. Many times it takes quite a wrist contortion to point the remote correctly, and lord help anyone whose batteries are low or has something blocking the line of sight. I don't have near the trouble with a keyboard that I do with the remote, yet when one says something about the remote the response is generally "walk to the TV stupid" - yea big help there. Like occasionaly getting out of the chair and stressing cold muscels doesn't cause MUCH of the back problems we see today. And keyboards get a lot of attention.
I've had wrist injuries and had issues with pointing any remotes and had to switch hands (even had my right shoulder hurt trying to point the remote whith an injured wrist back when I lived in a dorm). This generally causes left wrist issues as it is continual motion it is not accustomed to. I imagine the repeated pointing of the device contributes a good deal to different repetitive stress syndromes.
While the remote isn't really that big a part of RPS problems it is something that should be VERY easy to fix but none of the better designs get picked up. Cheap easy fix for a minor problem - good cost benefit analysis.
"Maybe this is because under capitalism every decision is a compromise between rival power structures, while good engineering is an open discource between co-operating equals? (Compare Windows vs. Open Source)"
Or maybe because the soviets do not see as many issues with thier spacecraft failing, nor do they get the usage that our spacecraft do. No, those couldn't be an issue....
"A moon base or space elevator would be infinitely more useful than a space station."
Well, I agree 100% there. Unfortunatly this is like saying "zero emmesion unlimited power is much more useful than what we now use".
I am sure that more than just NASA would LOVE to have said elevator. I am also sure they would like a permament moon base. Those are currently either impossible or the cost is so prohibitive to be impossible. Though I am betting that a moon base is MUCH more expensive than the ISS as you have many more variables and more more gravity to overcome, though it is probably more usefull.
As is, if a permament space platform is wanted (not needed as it is currently not - and yes I agree with the funding and think it ought to be raised - I'm not knocking space exploration in that statement) then the ISS is probably the best mix of possibility and funding. But the best may not be a easily workable solution.
" Stunts like this are part of the mating ritual."
:) .
Thank you, I now have a new phrase that I must remember
That was damn funny!