Just because people are lazy doesn't mean LASER it stops being an acronym. Even if when everyone writes it lowercase it is still wrong simply because of this fact.
Incorrect. When it reaches the point that everyone does it that way, it's standard usage, and doing it differently is archaic. English has no central standardization body to make authoritative rules on the language (unlike French), so in English, "standard usage" and "correct" are synonymous, regardless of historic arguments about how it might have been done differently in the past.
Positional notation is unarguably better for doing mathematics, particularly on paper. For communications purposes, however, any arbitrary system for representing numbers is fine, and there is no advantage of one over the other for communication purposes save familiarity with the system by the intended reader. It is often assumed that any reasonably literate person can at least read from I to XII as easily in roman numerals as in arabic numerals, as these are the twelve numbers you see written on a clock face. It's also assumed that people can read clocks. I know in modern times there are a lot of particularly dull people who can't do either, but that's another issue entirely. In any case, I object to the notion that communications should always be dumbed-down for the sake of the semi-literate.
However, I still think there is a much higher degree of risk aversion among nerds...
Actually, I find risk aversion is much more common among less intelligent people, who cannot evaluate risk as well as the "nerdier" types, and thus tend to fear things to a much greater degree than is actually warranted.
If I'm programming in Python, then I'm not programming in Perl.
This is either false, or trivially true but utterly irrelevant, depending on what you meant.
I program in PHP, Python, and Perl, among other things. Granted, I don't do them literally at the same time, but I also don't drive and code at the same time -- that doesn't mean automobiles are a roadblock to Perl 6 adoption. If the new Perl does nifty stuff, I'll use it. If there are coders out there who pick one language and never use anything else, treat them the same way you'd treat a mechanic who refuses to use anything other than his favorite hammer to fix your car, regardless of the problem needing fixing.
One would think the meaning is obvious, but I'll spell it out: the vast, vast majority of code is developed to be used in-house. A tiny, miniscule fraction of code "is written with the intent of releasing an application to the general population."
Good for Japan. Too bad other countries are not collaborating and taking advantage of this advancement, or are they?
They will. The Japanese are not the Soviet Union, they're not going to keep the technology under wraps and prevent anyone else from learning how it was done. The Cold War is over. They'll be articles and papers and such. Welcome to the 21st century. This was invented on Earth. People on Earth will take advantage of it. The specific nationality of the inventors is largely irrelevant. Humanity benefits, and only living fossils from the previous century will get worked about where specifically on Earth it was invented...
Magnetic torquers are already in use and would have the same benefits/limitations as these LCD thingies.
Not exactly. The OP asked about satellite station keeping AND deep space missions. The magnetic torquers may work fine for the former but not for the latter. They don't have the same benefits/limitions, they are in fact much more limited, being only useful while in orbit around planets with significant magnetic fields. The LCD thingies work whereever the sun shines, which is a much larger volume of space (although still essentially limited to the inner solar system).
This is essentially true. However, it's probably simpler to note that solar sails are pushed along by light pressure, generated by the photons hitting the sail. The photons, being light, tend to travel at light speed (by definition). There are other considerations besides the lack of a keel for why a spacecraft won't be exceeding that speed.
You honestly think property taxes account for half the income of poor people? If you don't think it's a full 50% of it, then what makes you think eliminating it will allow someone to work one job instead of two?
Incidentally, I'm 100% for the elimination of property tax. I'm just 100% against bad logic.
Hey, don't confuse people with facts. The "parents sue" meme is a precious one to many. If we don't have it, we might have to think about what's really wrong with our schools...
There is no "E" because, unlike what a lot of people mistakenly think, the "A"-"F" do not form a kind of continuous scale and are not meant to. "A"-"D" form a continuous scale of passing grades for a class, indicating how well you did. If you simply did not pass, you don't get a letting indicating where you place on that passing scale. Instead you get an "F", indicating failure. Thus, if you're going to stop accepting "D" as a passing grade, the grading scale for passing grades would be "A"-"C" instead, and again "F" indicates failure.
Perl is not New Fangled. I am sorry to say Perl is one of those.COM languages that has sparked peoples interest for a few years but have settled down to niche language. So it is now an Old School Language... Sorry...
Oh yes, of course. Naturally there's nothing essential to be invented at all. Anything useful would have been invented centuries ago, so anything new is obviously a waste of time.
You know a joystick costs somewhere between one half and one fifth of the cost of the game?
I'm reeling over trying to process the idea of someone interested enough in flying to buy Flight Simulator but not interested enough to buy a joystick. That seems to be a logical contradiction...
If a really freakin' huge star is created in the universe and no one is around to observe it, does it break a record?
That one's easy, as there are no unrecorded records, by definition. The real question is, lacking any observation, does it even exist, or does it just probably exist, or "exist" in an undetermined state until observed? And what counts as "observation"?
Depends on who you ask. It arguably is. And before someone leaps forward with links about Ceres being classified as a "dwarf planet", let me note that saying what Ceres is doesn't prove what it isn't, as things can answer to more than one description (you don't contradict someone claiming that a man is a father by noting that he's a brother -- he can be both). "Planet" has now received a much less ambiguous definition than it once had, and "dwarf planet" has be coined, but, as far as I know, "asteroid" has not be disambiguated in any way that would make Ceres inarguably no longer one. Indeed the IAU Minor Planet Center specifically notes that a number of objects on the "minor planet" (the technical term for an asteroid) list have dual designations (e.g. also being numbered and listed in cometary catalogues), and goes on to note that they inclusion of an object on the new dwarf planet list does not preclude its inclusion on minor planet or other lists.
Normally I'm all for studies that don't have any obvious near term benefit, but this is ridiculous. It's not a particularly useful set of studies to be making...
Well, one of the differences between the philosophical mind and the scientific mind is that the former loves to reason out conclusions a priori like you're doing above, whereas the latter likes to actually test things. It's impossible to say until after the study is done whether it will yield any useful results. There are good reasons to think it will, though, as the same neural processes are pretty much guaranteed in all mammals when it comes to how they going about reorganizing their locomotive systems.
As for making robotic prosthesises, perhaps at some point we need to just admit that it's just an animal... Giving it a robotic leg is just plane silly.
I'd accuse of you being plane stupid but planes can practically land themselves these days. Clue alert: robotic prosthesises are not just for dogs anymore!
Slashdot Mirror
Net result: post is +5 funny but you take major karma hits.
"We used to rate people -1 Overrated. Now we just rate them +1 Funny. It's more effective that way."
(Apologies to KMFDM...)
Just because people are lazy doesn't mean LASER it stops being an acronym. Even if when everyone writes it lowercase it is still wrong simply because of this fact.
Incorrect. When it reaches the point that everyone does it that way, it's standard usage, and doing it differently is archaic. English has no central standardization body to make authoritative rules on the language (unlike French), so in English, "standard usage" and "correct" are synonymous, regardless of historic arguments about how it might have been done differently in the past.
Free will is an illusion
I choose not to read that... :p
Positional notation is unarguably better for doing mathematics, particularly on paper. For communications purposes, however, any arbitrary system for representing numbers is fine, and there is no advantage of one over the other for communication purposes save familiarity with the system by the intended reader. It is often assumed that any reasonably literate person can at least read from I to XII as easily in roman numerals as in arabic numerals, as these are the twelve numbers you see written on a clock face. It's also assumed that people can read clocks. I know in modern times there are a lot of particularly dull people who can't do either, but that's another issue entirely. In any case, I object to the notion that communications should always be dumbed-down for the sake of the semi-literate.
However, I still think there is a much higher degree of risk aversion among nerds...
Actually, I find risk aversion is much more common among less intelligent people, who cannot evaluate risk as well as the "nerdier" types, and thus tend to fear things to a much greater degree than is actually warranted.
...get yourself and a few hundred friends to star war-dialing the company...
For those not familiar with the practice, that's when you call someone and make wookie noises into the phone.
If I'm programming in Python, then I'm not programming in Perl.
This is either false, or trivially true but utterly irrelevant, depending on what you meant.
I program in PHP, Python, and Perl, among other things. Granted, I don't do them literally at the same time, but I also don't drive and code at the same time -- that doesn't mean automobiles are a roadblock to Perl 6 adoption. If the new Perl does nifty stuff, I'll use it. If there are coders out there who pick one language and never use anything else, treat them the same way you'd treat a mechanic who refuses to use anything other than his favorite hammer to fix your car, regardless of the problem needing fixing.
Care to elaborate?
One would think the meaning is obvious, but I'll spell it out: the vast, vast majority of code is developed to be used in-house. A tiny, miniscule fraction of code "is written with the intent of releasing an application to the general population."
get worked UP, that is...
Good for Japan. Too bad other countries are not collaborating and taking advantage of this advancement, or are they?
They will. The Japanese are not the Soviet Union, they're not going to keep the technology under wraps and prevent anyone else from learning how it was done. The Cold War is over. They'll be articles and papers and such. Welcome to the 21st century. This was invented on Earth. People on Earth will take advantage of it. The specific nationality of the inventors is largely irrelevant. Humanity benefits, and only living fossils from the previous century will get worked about where specifically on Earth it was invented...
Magnetic torquers are already in use and would have the same benefits/limitations as these LCD thingies.
Not exactly. The OP asked about satellite station keeping AND deep space missions. The magnetic torquers may work fine for the former but not for the latter. They don't have the same benefits/limitions, they are in fact much more limited, being only useful while in orbit around planets with significant magnetic fields. The LCD thingies work whereever the sun shines, which is a much larger volume of space (although still essentially limited to the inner solar system).
This is essentially true. However, it's probably simpler to note that solar sails are pushed along by light pressure, generated by the photons hitting the sail. The photons, being light, tend to travel at light speed (by definition). There are other considerations besides the lack of a keel for why a spacecraft won't be exceeding that speed.
No, I can definitely say that common sense is not limited only to women...
[citation needed]
o.O
You honestly think property taxes account for half the income of poor people? If you don't think it's a full 50% of it, then what makes you think eliminating it will allow someone to work one job instead of two?
Incidentally, I'm 100% for the elimination of property tax. I'm just 100% against bad logic.
Hey, don't confuse people with facts. The "parents sue" meme is a precious one to many. If we don't have it, we might have to think about what's really wrong with our schools...
Really? That kind sucks for college placement, then, as your GPA is going to be compared to other students who used a different scale.
Not that GPA's from different institutions are commensurable in any case, but a lot of colleges treat them like they are.
There is no "E" because, unlike what a lot of people mistakenly think, the "A"-"F" do not form a kind of continuous scale and are not meant to. "A"-"D" form a continuous scale of passing grades for a class, indicating how well you did. If you simply did not pass, you don't get a letting indicating where you place on that passing scale. Instead you get an "F", indicating failure. Thus, if you're going to stop accepting "D" as a passing grade, the grading scale for passing grades would be "A"-"C" instead, and again "F" indicates failure.
Perl is not New Fangled. I am sorry to say Perl is one of those .COM languages that has sparked peoples interest for a few years but have settled down to niche language. So it is now an Old School Language... Sorry...
:o
GET OFF MY LAWN!
Oh yes, of course. Naturally there's nothing essential to be invented at all. Anything useful would have been invented centuries ago, so anything new is obviously a waste of time.
You know a joystick costs somewhere between one half and one fifth of the cost of the game?
I'm reeling over trying to process the idea of someone interested enough in flying to buy Flight Simulator but not interested enough to buy a joystick. That seems to be a logical contradiction...
o.O
Thanks for the wonderful example of the irrationality that surrounds this particular debate.
If a really freakin' huge star is created in the universe and no one is around to observe it, does it break a record?
That one's easy, as there are no unrecorded records, by definition. The real question is, lacking any observation, does it even exist, or does it just probably exist, or "exist" in an undetermined state until observed? And what counts as "observation"?
Ceres isn't an asteroid.
Depends on who you ask. It arguably is. And before someone leaps forward with links about Ceres being classified as a "dwarf planet", let me note that saying what Ceres is doesn't prove what it isn't, as things can answer to more than one description (you don't contradict someone claiming that a man is a father by noting that he's a brother -- he can be both). "Planet" has now received a much less ambiguous definition than it once had, and "dwarf planet" has be coined, but, as far as I know, "asteroid" has not be disambiguated in any way that would make Ceres inarguably no longer one. Indeed the IAU Minor Planet Center specifically notes that a number of objects on the "minor planet" (the technical term for an asteroid) list have dual designations (e.g. also being numbered and listed in cometary catalogues), and goes on to note that they inclusion of an object on the new dwarf planet list does not preclude its inclusion on minor planet or other lists.
Now we just need a forward-firing wave motion gun...
Normally I'm all for studies that don't have any obvious near term benefit, but this is ridiculous. It's not a particularly useful set of studies to be making ...
Well, one of the differences between the philosophical mind and the scientific mind is that the former loves to reason out conclusions a priori like you're doing above, whereas the latter likes to actually test things. It's impossible to say until after the study is done whether it will yield any useful results. There are good reasons to think it will, though, as the same neural processes are pretty much guaranteed in all mammals when it comes to how they going about reorganizing their locomotive systems.
As for making robotic prosthesises, perhaps at some point we need to just admit that it's just an animal... Giving it a robotic leg is just plane silly.
I'd accuse of you being plane stupid but planes can practically land themselves these days. Clue alert: robotic prosthesises are not just for dogs anymore!