This entire argument reveals the religious aspects of our current scientific estabishment. 1) It has 'priests' who dispense esoteric knowledge and the accepted understanding of reality to the masses. 2) All the facts are not known and in some cases, are unknowable at the current time. This forces people to choose what they want to believe as an act of faith. 3) Those that are not 'priests' cannot question the pronouncements of the hierarchy. 4) 'Priests' and 'acolytes' must be very careful how they question the 'dogma'. 5) Those that challenge the 'dogma' are attacked, labeled 'heretic' and ostracized from the 'body' (Perhaps even 'killed' as far as their career goes).
There are many other organizations that function this way (cults, governments, etc), I'm not singling out science as the only one. The scientific establishment, however, makes claims to be 'objective'. This claim should make them MORE willing to be questioned not less willing.
And the reality that the scientific establishment allows itself to be eventually convinced of a truth ('continental drift',etc)does not invalidate it's current 'religious' structure. The Catholic church eventually admitted that the earth orbited the sun, but only when the evidence was overwhelming.
Truth defends itself, character assasination is the refuge of those who, without firm foundation, are 'married to their ideas'.
Yes. This *begs* for Class Action. Do the research once, send one notification: "...we have 10143 litigants persuing 500 dollars each...".
Now, we get to the interesting stuff - how would you get all your participants? Sounds like an open source project to me.
Develop an application that people can download that scans through their mailboxes daily looking for known spam messages. If it finds one the users name is added to the litagant list. Participants should be able to use the application to designate certain messages as potential spam, those messages are funneled to a central repository for research and, if deceptive, legal action.
Now *this* sounds like a business opportunity with "unlimited potential"!
(All rights reserved...anyone using this idea *must* let me participate!):)
I doubt that personal flying vehicles would be permitted to fly any path to the desired destination. Military installations and air traffic control regions would still be restricted/controlled airspace. In the U.S. I predict that dams, nuclear plants and other 'sensitive' installations will now be restricted forever.
If private air traffic proliferates, I can envision a new class of restricted areas:
Wilderness areas ("we can't permit these vehicles to disturb the [fill in endangered creature here]"), national parks ("they ruin the view"), observatories, etc. Those who live in major flyover zones will petition their legislators to restrict traffic over their homes ("Did you see the naked babe by the pool?? Go back! Go back!").
In the end, I suspect society will squeeze air traffic (mostly) back into "acceptable" corridors, and then a precision navigation/auto-pilot system will become an absolute necessity.
As someone who's worked in IT for 15+ years I can only give you this one piece of advice: It's not your life, it's just a career. Don't let your identity get wrapped up in what you do. Your job is the place where you trade the moments of your life for money. Don't sell yourself cheap. Millions of people work in virtual slavery - don't be one of them. The ratio of income potiential to education for IT work is as high or higher than any other career. Get your degree. Spend a few years making moderate income to get the experience needed to be truly valuable in your field. It probably won't be fun, but view it as an investment in your future. Take that experience and make the most money you can without selling out your morals. Use that money to live your real life, do something meaningful, help people, whatever.
That said, exercise extreme self control in your lifestyle - do NOT allow your lifestyle to rise to your income. Keep that 'starving student' mindset. Treat each job as a 'means to an end'. Always living at the limits of your income makes you a slave - don't fall into the consumerism trap. Start planning now to be the master of your money and not it's servant.
Born a geek, or did ST push you in that direction?
on
Ask Wil Wheaton Anything
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Did you have a technical inclination prior to STTNG? Did you become more/less interested in tech from your ST experience? If so, in what ways?
But the final paragraph clearly stated that he already *knew* what the 'diehards' would recommend - clearly indicating that he wanted feedback on alternative solutions.
So who is letting personal prejudices interfere with understanding???
"To the man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."
applied to this 'ask slashdot':
"To a slashdot tech-head, everything looks like a cheap linux box solution"
(Damit Jim! I'm a doctor not a programmer! But if I had only had linux I could have saved him!!!)
1) Seal up all the entrances to a big hole in the ground.
2) Pump the slime into the hole.
3) Decomposition produces heat and pressure
Now you have some options:
A) Put a turbine at one of the openings and use the heat and pressure to produce energy. Funnel the escaping CO2 into an algae farm. Loop to step two above...
B) Let the heat and pressure produce oil (contrary to popular belief, it doesn't take millions of years), then pump the oil out and refine it. Get 2 uses of the carbon instead of one and in the process, convert coal to oil. But because we are 'making' oil, we don't have pump new stuff out of the ground in the OPEC nations and thus we are actually reducing carbon output.
It only takes a few seconds to open the junk mail, extract, seal and drop the return envelope on your outgoing mail pile.
It will, however, delay future postal rate increases. The bulk mailers do have to pay when that business reply envelope is sent back. More mail = more postal service income = longer delay before they raise the rates.
And all this talk about raising the cost of goods I'll eventually have to buy is bunk. I'm NEVER going to buy a 'turnip twaddler' nor anything else from the vast majority of snail-spam vendors.
A few years ago, one of the car manufacturers came up with the idea of a 'light engine' that would produce all the light the car needed and then pipe the light around via fiber optics where it was needed. It never caught on.
This ability to stop light opens the door to being able to store light in a container, releasing it later when needed. In 'light' of the huge amount of power that is used to produce illumination in advanced societies what kind of energy savings might be enabled by this kind of technology?
Actually, we don't even have to stop the light, if we could create an 'optic pipe' that contained the light-slowing gas in such a way that it took 12 hours or so for the light to get from one end to the other, this would create a device that 'stored' light during the day and emitted it at night. Just about the time that the last of the light got through the pipe, it would be morning again. A solar concentrator could be used to focus intense light into the pipe and the pipe could be funneled into the afore-mentioned 'light engine' idea. This strategy might be used to allow solars cells to produce light 24 hours a day...
Of course, the economics of this may make it prohibitive. I seem to remember a requirement of extremely low temperatures in relation to slowing light with cesium gases.
Wow. I can't believe that the moderators haven't put this one on the main page. This could change mechanical engineering like the transistor changed computing.
Yes, I know it probably isn't magic, but think of all the things where friction is a limiting factor. Even if this type of coating only HALVES the friction force, the impact would be incredible. If it really is as non-reactive as they are saying, a whole new class of containers and transmission conduits would spring into being.
What's more, this sounds like a relatively straight-forward manufacturing process and could probably be incorporated into almost anything where one part rubs on another or needs to be protected from the elements.
I want more specs! How hard is this stuff, could it function as a cheap substitute for industrial diamond coatings? Is this stuff a conductor or insulator (either? semi?) At those densities, how does it bleed heat?
Bond a coating of this stuff to ship hulls and watch those barnacles try and get a grip! That alone would revolutionize the costs of sea transport. Not to mention the reduction in friction effects for the hull itself. Anything that has to resist the effects of sea water would be transformed.
Near frictionless bearings without magnetics or lubrication, now THAT would be cool...
Part of the problem (perhaps most) is that so many of us are maintaining applications and systems that have hung around since the dark ages.
We inherit this junk and spend most of our time trying to get it to do things that was never part of the original concept. Few organizations will authorize the rewrite of a functioning system, even if it's riddled with bugs. Nor will they give us time necessary to 'do the "Raid" thing' and exterminate the bugs.
Another part of the problem is that if we waited around until the users gave us enough info for complete specifications, NOTHING WOULD EVER GET DONE! Sheesh folks, we're SOFTWARE ENGINEERS, we write code that automates what's in the users heads! If the user can't (won't) explain what they do, we can't implement it...
I'd LOVE to be able to wait for complete specs, but if I did, someone else would soon have my job...
Capitalism - a horrible system, but simply better than anything else that's been tried...
Slashdot Mirror
This entire argument reveals the religious aspects of our current scientific estabishment.
1) It has 'priests' who dispense esoteric knowledge and the accepted understanding of reality to the masses.
2) All the facts are not known and in some cases, are unknowable at the current time. This forces people to choose what they want to believe as an act of faith.
3) Those that are not 'priests' cannot question the pronouncements of the hierarchy.
4) 'Priests' and 'acolytes' must be very careful how they question the 'dogma'.
5) Those that challenge the 'dogma' are attacked, labeled 'heretic' and ostracized from the 'body' (Perhaps even 'killed' as far as their career goes).
There are many other organizations that function this way (cults, governments, etc), I'm not singling out science as the only one. The scientific establishment, however, makes claims to be 'objective'. This claim should make them MORE willing to be questioned not less willing.
And the reality that the scientific establishment allows itself to be eventually convinced of a truth ('continental drift',etc)does not invalidate it's current 'religious' structure. The Catholic church eventually admitted that the earth orbited the sun, but only when the evidence was overwhelming.
Truth defends itself, character assasination is the refuge of those who, without firm foundation, are 'married to their ideas'.
Yes. This *begs* for Class Action. Do the research once, send one notification: "...we have 10143 litigants persuing 500 dollars each...".
:)
Now, we get to the interesting stuff - how would you get all your participants? Sounds like an open source project to me.
Develop an application that people can download that scans through their mailboxes daily looking for known spam messages. If it finds one the users name is added to the litagant list. Participants should be able to use the application to designate certain messages as potential spam, those messages are funneled to a central repository for research and, if deceptive, legal action.
Now *this* sounds like a business opportunity with "unlimited potential"!
(All rights reserved...anyone using this idea *must* let me participate!)
I doubt that personal flying vehicles would be permitted to fly any path to the desired destination. Military installations and air traffic control regions would still be restricted/controlled airspace. In the U.S. I predict that dams, nuclear plants and other 'sensitive' installations will now be restricted forever.
If private air traffic proliferates, I can envision a new class of restricted areas:
Wilderness areas ("we can't permit these vehicles to disturb the [fill in endangered creature here]"), national parks ("they ruin the view"), observatories, etc. Those who live in major flyover zones will petition their legislators to restrict traffic over their homes ("Did you see the naked babe by the pool?? Go back! Go back!").
In the end, I suspect society will squeeze air traffic (mostly) back into "acceptable" corridors, and then a precision navigation/auto-pilot system will become an absolute necessity.
As someone who's worked in IT for 15+ years I can only give you this one piece of advice: It's not your life, it's just a career. Don't let your identity get wrapped up in what you do. Your job is the place where you trade the moments of your life for money. Don't sell yourself cheap. Millions of people work in virtual slavery - don't be one of them. The ratio of income potiential to education for IT work is as high or higher than any other career. Get your degree. Spend a few years making moderate income to get the experience needed to be truly valuable in your field. It probably won't be fun, but view it as an investment in your future. Take that experience and make the most money you can without selling out your morals. Use that money to live your real life, do something meaningful, help people, whatever.
That said, exercise extreme self control in your lifestyle - do NOT allow your lifestyle to rise to your income. Keep that 'starving student' mindset. Treat each job as a 'means to an end'. Always living at the limits of your income makes you a slave - don't fall into the consumerism trap. Start planning now to be the master of your money and not it's servant.
Did you have a technical inclination prior to STTNG? Did you become more/less interested in tech from your ST experience? If so, in what ways?
"The higher the fewer!!!"
possible explanation here...
But the final paragraph clearly stated that he already *knew* what the 'diehards' would recommend - clearly indicating that he wanted feedback on alternative solutions.
So who is letting personal prejudices interfere with understanding???
"To the man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."
applied to this 'ask slashdot':
"To a slashdot tech-head, everything looks like a cheap linux box solution"
(Damit Jim! I'm a doctor not a programmer! But if I had only had linux I could have saved him!!!)
1) Seal up all the entrances to a big hole in the ground.
2) Pump the slime into the hole.
3) Decomposition produces heat and pressure
Now you have some options:
A) Put a turbine at one of the openings and use the heat and pressure to produce energy. Funnel the escaping CO2 into an algae farm. Loop to step two above...
B) Let the heat and pressure produce oil (contrary to popular belief, it doesn't take millions of years), then pump the oil out and refine it. Get 2 uses of the carbon instead of one and in the process, convert coal to oil. But because we are 'making' oil, we don't have pump new stuff out of the ground in the OPEC nations and thus we are actually reducing carbon output.
It only takes a few seconds to open the junk mail, extract, seal and drop the return envelope on your outgoing mail pile.
It will, however, delay future postal rate increases. The bulk mailers do have to pay when that business reply envelope is sent back. More mail = more postal service income = longer delay before they raise the rates.
And all this talk about raising the cost of goods I'll eventually have to buy is bunk. I'm NEVER going to buy a 'turnip twaddler' nor anything else from the vast majority of snail-spam vendors.
A few years ago, one of the car manufacturers came up with the idea of a 'light engine' that would produce all the light the car needed and then pipe the light around via fiber optics where it was needed. It never caught on.
This ability to stop light opens the door to being able to store light in a container, releasing it later when needed. In 'light' of the huge amount of power that is used to produce illumination in advanced societies what kind of energy savings might be enabled by this kind of technology?
Actually, we don't even have to stop the light, if we could create an 'optic pipe' that contained the light-slowing gas in such a way that it took 12 hours or so for the light to get from one end to the other, this would create a device that 'stored' light during the day and emitted it at night. Just about the time that the last of the light got through the pipe, it would be morning again. A solar concentrator could be used to focus intense light into the pipe and the pipe could be funneled into the afore-mentioned 'light engine' idea. This strategy might be used to allow solars cells to produce light 24 hours a day...
Of course, the economics of this may make it prohibitive. I seem to remember a requirement of extremely low temperatures in relation to slowing light with cesium gases.
(Heading off to the Patent Department now...)
Wow. I can't believe that the moderators haven't put this one on the main page. This could change mechanical engineering like the transistor changed computing.
Yes, I know it probably isn't magic, but think of all the things where friction is a limiting factor. Even if this type of coating only HALVES the friction force, the impact would be incredible. If it really is as non-reactive as they are saying, a whole new class of containers and transmission conduits would spring into being.
What's more, this sounds like a relatively straight-forward manufacturing process and could probably be incorporated into almost anything where one part rubs on another or needs to be protected from the elements.
I want more specs! How hard is this stuff, could it function as a cheap substitute for industrial diamond coatings? Is this stuff a conductor or insulator (either? semi?) At those densities, how does it bleed heat?
Bond a coating of this stuff to ship hulls and watch those barnacles try and get a grip! That alone would revolutionize the costs of sea transport. Not to mention the reduction in friction effects for the hull itself. Anything that has to resist the effects of sea water would be transformed.
Near frictionless bearings without magnetics or lubrication, now THAT would be cool...
Part of the problem (perhaps most) is that so many of us are maintaining applications and systems that have hung around since the dark ages. We inherit this junk and spend most of our time trying to get it to do things that was never part of the original concept. Few organizations will authorize the rewrite of a functioning system, even if it's riddled with bugs. Nor will they give us time necessary to 'do the "Raid" thing' and exterminate the bugs.
Another part of the problem is that if we waited around until the users gave us enough info for complete specifications, NOTHING WOULD EVER GET DONE! Sheesh folks, we're SOFTWARE ENGINEERS, we write code that automates what's in the users heads! If the user can't (won't) explain what they do, we can't implement it...
I'd LOVE to be able to wait for complete specs, but if I did, someone else would soon have my job...
Capitalism - a horrible system, but simply better than anything else that's been tried...