Quest64, also uses pie menus, although they all only have 4 choices, and its not a mouse interface. N64 game, not particularly great for its genre, but wasn't too bad either.
if the brain has to rewire itself; then it is compensating for damage.
If you cut my arm, and the tissue closes, reforms, and scars, then that doesn't mean there wasn't damage to the arm -- there was damage. And it was fixed.
Brain damage doesn't have to be permanent just to get to the status of 'damage'. In Mann's case brain damage would be depriving him of his altered vision -- because he had his brain wired to work well with it. Rewiring to work 'normally' is damage...because his ideal brain state is not 'normal' and so it requires energy, time, etc. for his brain to 'heal' (ie: reconfigure itself to work with his sytem (once turned back on)).
The prefix could be the latin prefix for negation; or it could be the latin preposition being used as a prefix.
induce, for example, is an example of in- being used in a similiar fashion to inflammable.
invincible is an example of in- being used in the "in" == "not" sense. Which is arguably more common, since enough people make the mistake that any dictionary includes usage notes on flammable. But I'm just speculating.
Actually, global warming would, in the immediate future, make winters colder and longer. It would also push them back, so that december would be warmer and march would be colder, relatively.
The idea is that your insulating the entire earth so that it can trap heat more effectively. But should the heat escape, it will mean that it will also be harder to heat up. A greenhouse gas makes it easier to heat up than it does to cool off, so, in the long run, as the winters *and* summers got longer, the summers would overrun the winters. But, before that time, there is still plenty of room in Spring for Winter to expand into.
But this is hardly important...since it doesn't take more than a tiny grain of salt to realize that we have some pretty scanty data to be talking about global climatic change. Even more importantly...we're making the mistake of assuming that we're the center of the universe by assuming that somehow global warming is our fault and that we're capable of somehow mitigating or even fixing it.
We've done some pretty impressive things, but Man is by no means the center of the universe, the galaxy, the solar system, or even the Earth. Can we stop an earthquake? A volcanic eruption? A solar flare? The tides? The earth releases far more CO2 per year, naturally, than we do in all our glorified industry. If we're going to spend trillions of dollars, we'd probably have more luck trying to stop that. (Vacuum seal the earth? sounds like a great idea...)
Further, the author of the study also makes it clear, imho, that he in no way rejects the cultural explanations presented; merely that there are underlying economic forces that affect our very desire to form such cultures in the first place. If you read *all* the way to the end he even repeats himself concerning the scope of his conclusions -- that it should not be applied as an analysis of why developers continue to invest time in an open-source project, but rather, why any open-source project could ever start. Most of the replies so far have been anecdotal "that's not how I feel about it" or "I choose to do it becase..." -- the author does not attempt to dispute that the rational concious decisions are truthful and powerful explanatory tools. Rather, he makes the point that classical economic theory does not concern itself with rational motivations, but rather, that such motivations are in and of themselves influenced by the economic forces on an unconcious level.
Which is a reasonable thing to assume; as such a calcuating engine is obviously in effect already to control most emotive output in your life -- the entire point (biologically) of the emotions and the stimulus that produce them is to attempt to motivate you into doing what you should be doing (reproducing and protecting your reproduced genes (not necessarily your children, mind, just your genes, kin selection can play an important role)). At least; that seems like the most reasonable conclusion based upon the geological record of evolution that has currently been proposed.
Whether or not such systems are capable of properly handling a shift in values to the modern economy so as to be able to influence your concious desires in a way that one is not aware of -- that can be debated. However, very strong arguments can be made that the specifics of what behaivours should be accompanied with happiness/desire/etc are learned. (sexual fetishes, for example, make pretty strong cases, esp for objects that have only been invented in modern day (biologically 'modern' mind...which is a fairly long amount of time for a reproductive cycle of 15 odd years))
However, I will say that a very strong criticism could be made for attempting to model a phenomen that is obviously highly culturally influenced with a model that isn't conducive, or at least, unaware, to community effort. It is possible under the pressures of natural selection that an organism, or rather, group of organisms, can evolve to make altruistic behaivour -- as long as it is accompanied with punishment behaivour for individuals that attempt to freeload. Then the entire group survives better, reproduces more, blah blah blah -- so that attempting to explicate everything in terms of one individuals inherently programmed desire to cost-minimize and benefit-maximize hides an important evolved ability of humans to do something precisely only to help others. At least, as far as the individual sees it. Of course, the individual does benefit -- every individual is attempting to do the same thing (except those that are getting punished for breaking the social contract), so the entire group benefits. (division of labor, blah blah)
But classical models, while capable of modelling this behaivour, usually do not consider it -- ie: there is a prohibitive cost incurred when attempting to maximize benefits at too high a level above others in the same social network -- MS for example suffers many prohibitive costs for their behaivour. (popular dislike (among developers) == greater difficulty in hiring new talent == greater difficulty in retaining employees; also the anti-trust court cases, etc..)
At the same time, there is another 'cost' mechanism at work that occurs even before the punitive cost enforced the rest of society -- most individuals will stop benefit maximizing after they reach a comfortable limit, even without tax incentives to do so -- for example...most of the posters before this point are at a comfortable enough level that they would feel uncomfortable exploiting the rest of the people around them, despite the relative ease with which they could do so. The rationalizations vary, but the point is that most people are not Robber Barons, nor given the oppurtinity would most people take it. Most people, given 10 millions dollars, become very generous. Some do not, but humans aren't exactly hive creatures.
Not that bees are really a good example of this kind of adaptive behaivour (ie; breed for forcing the organism to incur a cost upon itself for behaivour that isn't in the interest of the group, as well as breed for organisms that as a group incur punitive damages on any organisms that fail to control themselves) -- kin selection plays too great a role.
As far as NIH is concerned -- it is almost impossible to fire someone.
You move them to a job that they will want to quit instead. It becomes difficult to do that though; because it is also difficult to move someone into a job that they haven't been trained to perform; and it is almost impossible to forcibly move someone to a lower pay grade level.
I can't say I know exactly why -- I just know that my mother has complained about having to get rid of a total incompetent that she couldn't just fire, because of the rules and regulations concerning it.
She is at the highest level you can be without senatorial or presidential appointment -- so those rules and regulations must be pretty hard to break.
There are rights, limitations, on even contracts you agree to. There are rights you can't sign away, especially within the context of an employment.
That is what contract law is all about -- a contract isn't automatically legal simply because I sign my name to it. That is true for private sector and public sector jobs -- there are things the government cannot do, even when handing out 'gifts' (ie: jobs). There are even some things private sector jobs cannot do.
For example: your employer cannot require you to sign a contract to continue employment that allows him to sexually harass you.
As far as search and seizure goes: the limit is against unreasonable. The government, no matter what, cannot do unreasonable search and seizures. It can ask, in the form of a contract, for a redefinition of reasonable within a certain scope -- like the military, or the CIA. That makes sense, and is reasonable. But such a contract doesn't say: "you agree to submit to unreasoanble searches whenever we want you to". A justification is necessary -- in the case of the military the justification is obvious. That makes it *reasonable*.
So as far as the topic is concerned: it is an empirical question. It isn't about the ideals of freedom or the limits of governmental power so much as it is about what we, as Americans, think is reasonable for a scientist at NIH to be enduring for our collective security. There are a couple quick ways to answer such a question:
is he being searched more than his peers?
Because if he was; then it is obviously unreasonable: the only justification for enforcing searches on this individual is because of his position. If people in the same position are not being as harassed, then it is obvious that the searches are not being done because of his position, but rather, on some other (until proven reasonable) unreasonable criteria.
So -- no. We do have rights at work. We are not slaves to the corporations or the government -- we are the corporations, we are the government. We are responsible for the definition of reasonable, and for limiting the power our peers (political and business leaders) are allowed to have. If *you* want to sell your freedom for money...then you are welcome to... But that is only legal if we as a majority agree that freedom has a price -- that the 'privilege' of having a job can justify limitations on freedom.
Personally...the cynic inside me would say that that has already happened in this century. That it might not even be repairable without significant violence. That would be truly sad, and I hope that as a collective we will not be so fatalistic as to legitimize our own enslavement.
Yes you do. If you buy a CD, and your car only plays tapes, you're allowed to make a copy. In general, you're allowed to make 1 copy for your own use, and that would include ripping the CD onto your hard drive, but not putting it on any other hard drives.
And why, exactly, would de-pressurization of the plane matter, at all?
If all the people on the plane are going to die -- far better for those deaths to be the *only* deaths. And if no one can breathe, then no one is going to be able to control a flight *into* an occupied area. Now, it might land there randomly, anyway, but not nearly as likely.
And if the terrorist isn't trying to destroy hundreds or thousands of lives, then he doesn't need to fly the plane by himself, and so will be willing to submit to a demand of the pilot making a controlled, safe, landing, if pressured at gunpoint.
Not that that isn't the only possible solution, there are better. Someone mentioned a very thick metal shield separating the cockpit from the passenger cabin, with no access between them. Doesn't seem like a bad idea, at first evaluation. Other ideas would include buttons located in many many places on the airplane that would activate automatic, pre-recorded messages to the effect that the plane is no longer in full control of the pilot. Which, if pressed, with no further contact with airline authorities, would be sure sign that the pilot was dead, or being forced not to engage in further contact. If this was made public knowledge, then any hijacker with demands not including the plane flying into something would certainly allow the pilot to contact air line authorities to cancel the imminent military action. (and obviously, that cancel would only be in effect for as long as the pilot continued to have uninterrupted radio contact)
A further possibility would be to deliberately engineer a partial-self destruct mechanism -- give the pilot the ability to blow the engines off the plane and deploy a parachute of some kind. Yes, while the parachute in many cases would be unable to save the lives of the people in the plane, and the plane could still land on an occupied area -- it is far better than the likely outcomes of allowing a hijacker to take the controls.
Even better would be giving the pilots the ability to complete destroy the navigational and control equipment; so that the plane becomes totally un-guidable. As soon as it is known that hijacker is present, point the plane at the nearest ocean, and destroy all of the controls. (and presumably activate an automatic message reporting that, which couldn't be turned off).
Or, altneratively, bank the plane into a hard turn, engage any other braking mechanisms, cut off all the fuel, and destroy all the controls. The plane will slow down as it turns (because it isn't giving itself forward thrust to compensate) and will slowly descend into the ground. It'll be a crash-landing, but better than many alternatives. And in the cases where it is possible to make a safe-landing, it is still possible to make a safe-landing -- the would-be hijacker simply must make it clear to the pilot (very quickly) that that is all he/she wants. If the hijacker does not with to preserve his/her own life -- then one can quickly presume all on the flight as good as dead.
As far as special relativity is concerned the general consensus is that that would have been formulated within that approxiate time frame (several people had promising work in that direction, some pople say about 3-5 years later for the non-Einsteins). Einstein gets the creds for General Relativity which was a much more complete and robust theory that actually did more than explain some few special exceptions from Newton's Laws, but created (or formulated) an entirely new perspective on the mechanics of the Universe, wholly separated from Newton's Laws.
Most people say that Einstein was way way ahead of his time to be able to come up with General Relativity.
Newton, on the other hand, deserves not at all any innovation award -- For Calculus, there was an independent inventor, a sure sign that neither person was way ahead of their time (Leibniz -- who ahd better notation anyway) -- For Physics he merely stood on the shoulders of Kepler and Galilleo. That achievement is comparable to coming up with Special Relativity -- coming up with an explanation for well-observed, documented, and predictable (ie: have equations for) phenonema, preferably one that explains multiple such phenonma at once. (like planets orbiting and objects falling).
General Relativity does not fit under that category because the theory came before the data -- well well before the data. (For many of the expirements there had to be wierd conditions present, like eclipses over correct spots on the globe). It is the only case I know of (at least in Physics) where anyone has come up with a theory, and then had it verified (since Einstein himself didn't actually do the expirements -- he knew he was right), instead of attempting to theorize about data already collected.
indistinguishable == inability to perceive a difference.
Any technology indistinguishable from magic ==
any technology which cannot be perceived (/classified) differently from magic
is insufficently advanced.
The point being that it is a refutation of the original quote: sufficiently advanced technology would, of necessity, be well understood and explainable to the last microscopic detail. An insufficiently advanced technology is one where there are many unexplained questions and 'magical' effects. The technology of electrical capacitance was insufficiently advanced in ancient times -- capacitors were holy objects with the power to hurt and kill.
Programming on an old, bizarre, system with many acts of 'black magic' is another example of technology, or more generally, knowledge, that is insufficiently advanced -- as it is only partly understood, and therefore 'magical'.
There is an english translation; it is printed by Perseus Books; Metropolitan Books owns the copyright on the english translation (1996). ISBN 0-201-47948-6
your not giving it away for free -- the payment is that they re-release the source code. considering how much one can pay for source code (pay programmers to produce it, or pay other companies for their time) that is quite a hefty price. one could assess damages based on the average price lines of source code are sold for, since that is the payment they are delinquent for (since that is really the major form of distribution, inventing another license one could try to assess damages with it, but if one never sold a single item under that license, it would be more difficult). So go out and do a survey to find out how much the average line of source code costs to purchase from another company -- I would bet that the cost would be high enough that just the length of the GPL code itself would be nasty (esp. at treble damages).
In gradius on the snes the code changed to up up down down LRLR BA start. that gave you a fully powered ship, as if you had picked up a million of the red glowing orbs. I think it also slowly broke the game though, as my game now starts with a grid of white lines on it for almost 10 seconds; it could also be the circuits disintegrating.
why are people bashing lisp so hard? lisp only has parentheses. lots of parentheses. but that should help clarity -- there can be no confusion about what order things are done in.
That's not true for all colleges. I dropped out of high school, and went to community college for a year. At the end of that year ASU mailed me asking me to apply to their school, that they would give me a tuition waver to come there. I think my cumulative HS GPA was a 3.0, with at least two semesters in my sophomore year and junior less than 2.0. I failed my junior year, second semester english class, and stat class. I am _not_ a national merit finalist, but I am a semifinalist. (meaning I was over 99.5% of people on the qualifying test, but they didn't like my essay (which isn't surprising, considering what i wrote)). I did not meet the transfer requirements, I was deficient in foreign languages, at the time of admission. Yet I currently attend ASU. In the honors college no less. So not all colleges hate the sore thumb...I'd wager that many engineering/science schools are even more accepting, knowing that the smartest, brightest, and most likely to succeed, come from very different backgrounds. Jobs, Gates, for two quick examples. You might have to look harder -- many of the ivy league schools probably do fit that description. But I've found that whenever a system is run by humans it is possible to 'socially engineer' a way around the beaurocracy. Just have to be willing to keep on going up levels until you find someone who understands you.
Think of this as currency exchange -- Francs to dollars for example. Find anyone willing to claim a given exchange rate, for all time. All money nowadays isn't based on anything other than trust, faith, mass belief and the sort. Used to be the dollar had a value in gold and silver, nowadays the only way to measure it would be to compare the prices of common items, and try to statistically correct for technological improvements making the cost to manufacture go down. Mojo is a different currency system, which represents the various costs of computing, time bandwidth storage, etc. How that is going to relate to dollars is going to fluctuate wildly as new levels of ability are reached by engineers. if we apply moore's law then I would assume that mojo would have an insanely fast increasing exchange rate to dollars (that is, more and more mojo required for a dollar). Of course that depends on how mojo is measured (percentage of the system, or credits with no limit).
rofl....i don't have the +1;). Then again, I don't try. But still, it's nice to set up mirrors for stuff. Even if the intent was karma whoring, i don't think it deserves name-calling. No reason to discourage behaivour which makes the world an easier nicer place.
battlebots, for one, restricts what weapons you can use, and EMP is on that list. In fact just about everything interesting is on that list. Lasers above 1 mW, liquids, adhesives, entanglement (but not entrapment) devices, heat weapons (flamethrowers, etc.), explosives, guns (untethered projectiles of any kind, tethered up to 10' ft.). About the only things you can do are shove, punch, drill, saw, and grind.
The bot that i would make would use suction cups, or a material like iguana skin, to latch on, lift the bot up, and drill into the bottom. (for spite, just holding it still for 30 seconds wins, as well as having a backup weapon should someone manage to cut off the attachment device. (which would be armored, at least lightly)).
Gall Force - Space, all females (cloning), the series that got me into anime. Has a sequel that's set on Earth with a title i can't remember. (something fairly similiar though)
If we just use 'programmer', then there won't be a one-word way of specifying the skill and/or style of the person. We would always have to waste an appositive phrase or another sentence to further specify the programmer's ability.
Very similiar to coding a project -- you can make functions, thereby making your top-level function somewhat readable and coherent -- or just code the whole thing as one function that does EVERYTHING (and therefore, has highly redudant sections, such as everytime you printed)
Humans are much more forgiving than computers, however, and can accept multiple definitions for single words and attempt to resolve it by context, and in many cases this works beautifully.
Experience shows that that is not happening -- many people confuse the terms, and many more believe the wrong meaning, and there is much confusion generated between the two groups of people using different definitions. Or -- if there isn't confusion -- there is bitter sarcasm and flaming, which doesn't really improve our image. So therefore, a discussion on what should be done about 'hacker' is completey appropiate -- whether to replace it with something just as specific and with the right connotations, or to press onwards and make the masses submit to our definitions.
-Lilior
P.S. Personally, I think almost all arguments result from improperly defined terms. Certainlly all the really long and stupid arguments.
It's not pointless -- Language is used to differenctiate between different objects -- hence we don't use 'container' to describe boxes, crates, purses, wallets, nuclear storage tanks, fanny packs, pocket protectors, camping bags, tents, houses, backpacks, notebooks, etc. unless we're just trying to highlight the 'container' aspect of the box, crate, etc.
This is probably still really expensive, but there are companies that have researched anti-sound devices, to be used on ocean-going steamers, and large factories. The idea is to take in samples from some ambient sound source, such as some random large engine, and flip the wave upside-down, and spit that out. The two waves overlap and the result is pure quiet. The really cool thing is that it can only work on a fairly constant sound source, since the technology isn't fast enough to read in the sound source produce the wave and spit out the anti-wave at the same velocity as the original -- which means that conversation can still be heard. (you could, in theory, set it up so that it could block conversation -- but why?) Keep on the lookout for it in the next few years, i'm betting companies will start making prototypes for airplanes and such.
Slashdot Mirror
Quest64, also uses pie menus, although they all only have 4 choices, and its not a mouse interface. N64 game, not particularly great for its genre, but wasn't too bad either.
if the brain has to rewire itself; then it is compensating for damage.
If you cut my arm, and the tissue closes, reforms, and scars, then that doesn't mean there wasn't damage to the arm -- there was damage. And it was fixed.
Brain damage doesn't have to be permanent just to get to the status of 'damage'. In Mann's case brain damage would be depriving him of his altered vision -- because he had his brain wired to work well with it. Rewiring to work 'normally' is damage...because his ideal brain state is not 'normal' and so it requires energy, time, etc. for his brain to 'heal' (ie: reconfigure itself to work with his sytem (once turned back on)).
"in-" != "not" && "in-" == "not"
ambiguity is fun.
The prefix could be the latin prefix for negation; or it could be the latin preposition being used as a prefix.
induce, for example, is an example of in- being used in a similiar fashion to inflammable.
invincible is an example of in- being used in the "in" == "not" sense. Which is arguably more common, since enough people make the mistake that any dictionary includes usage notes on flammable.
But I'm just speculating.
Actually, global warming would, in the immediate future, make winters colder and longer. It would also push them back, so that december would be warmer and march would be colder, relatively.
The idea is that your insulating the entire earth so that it can trap heat more effectively. But should the heat escape, it will mean that it will also be harder to heat up. A greenhouse gas makes it easier to heat up than it does to cool off, so, in the long run, as the winters *and* summers got longer, the summers would overrun the winters. But, before that time, there is still plenty of room in Spring for Winter to expand into.
But this is hardly important...since it doesn't take more than a tiny grain of salt to realize that we have some pretty scanty data to be talking about global climatic change. Even more importantly...we're making the mistake of assuming that we're the center of the universe by assuming that somehow global warming is our fault and that we're capable of somehow mitigating or even fixing it.
We've done some pretty impressive things, but Man is by no means the center of the universe, the galaxy, the solar system, or even the Earth. Can we stop an earthquake? A volcanic eruption? A solar flare? The tides? The earth releases far more CO2 per year, naturally, than we do in all our glorified industry. If we're going to spend trillions of dollars, we'd probably have more luck trying to stop that. (Vacuum seal the earth? sounds like a great idea...)
Further, the author of the study also makes it clear, imho, that he in no way rejects the cultural explanations presented; merely that there are underlying economic forces that affect our very desire to form such cultures in the first place. If you read *all* the way to the end he even repeats himself concerning the scope of his conclusions -- that it should not be applied as an analysis of why developers continue to invest time in an open-source project, but rather, why any open-source project could ever start. Most of the replies so far have been anecdotal "that's not how I feel about it" or "I choose to do it becase..." -- the author does not attempt to dispute that the rational concious decisions are truthful and powerful explanatory tools. Rather, he makes the point that classical economic theory does not concern itself with rational motivations, but rather, that such motivations are in and of themselves influenced by the economic forces on an unconcious level.
Which is a reasonable thing to assume; as such a calcuating engine is obviously in effect already to control most emotive output in your life -- the entire point (biologically) of the emotions and the stimulus that produce them is to attempt to motivate you into doing what you should be doing (reproducing and protecting your reproduced genes (not necessarily your children, mind, just your genes, kin selection can play an important role)). At least; that seems like the most reasonable conclusion based upon the geological record of evolution that has currently been proposed.
Whether or not such systems are capable of properly handling a shift in values to the modern economy so as to be able to influence your concious desires in a way that one is not aware of -- that can be debated. However, very strong arguments can be made that the specifics of what behaivours should be accompanied with happiness/desire/etc are learned. (sexual fetishes, for example, make pretty strong cases, esp for objects that have only been invented in modern day (biologically 'modern' mind...which is a fairly long amount of time for a reproductive cycle of 15 odd years))
However, I will say that a very strong criticism could be made for attempting to model a phenomen that is obviously highly culturally influenced with a model that isn't conducive, or at least, unaware, to community effort. It is possible under the pressures of natural selection that an organism, or rather, group of organisms, can evolve to make altruistic behaivour -- as long as it is accompanied with punishment behaivour for individuals that attempt to freeload. Then the entire group survives better, reproduces more, blah blah blah -- so that attempting to explicate everything in terms of one individuals inherently programmed desire to cost-minimize and benefit-maximize hides an important evolved ability of humans to do something precisely only to help others. At least, as far as the individual sees it. Of course, the individual does benefit -- every individual is attempting to do the same thing (except those that are getting punished for breaking the social contract), so the entire group benefits. (division of labor, blah blah)
But classical models, while capable of modelling this behaivour, usually do not consider it -- ie: there is a prohibitive cost incurred when attempting to maximize benefits at too high a level above others in the same social network -- MS for example suffers many prohibitive costs for their behaivour. (popular dislike (among developers) == greater difficulty in hiring new talent == greater difficulty in retaining employees; also the anti-trust court cases, etc..)
At the same time, there is another 'cost' mechanism at work that occurs even before the punitive cost enforced the rest of society -- most individuals will stop benefit maximizing after they reach a comfortable limit, even without tax incentives to do so -- for example...most of the posters before this point are at a comfortable enough level that they would feel uncomfortable exploiting the rest of the people around them, despite the relative ease with which they could do so. The rationalizations vary, but the point is that most people are not Robber Barons, nor given the oppurtinity would most people take it. Most people, given 10 millions dollars, become very generous. Some do not, but humans aren't exactly hive creatures.
Not that bees are really a good example of this kind of adaptive behaivour (ie; breed for forcing the organism to incur a cost upon itself for behaivour that isn't in the interest of the group, as well as breed for organisms that as a group incur punitive damages on any organisms that fail to control themselves) -- kin selection plays too great a role.
As far as NIH is concerned -- it is almost impossible to fire someone.
You move them to a job that they will want to quit instead. It becomes difficult to do that though; because it is also difficult to move someone into a job that they haven't been trained to perform; and it is almost impossible to forcibly move someone to a lower pay grade level.
I can't say I know exactly why -- I just know that my mother has complained about having to get rid of a total incompetent that she couldn't just fire, because of the rules and regulations concerning it.
She is at the highest level you can be without senatorial or presidential appointment -- so those rules and regulations must be pretty hard to break.
There are rights, limitations, on even contracts you agree to. There are rights you can't sign away, especially within the context of an employment.
That is what contract law is all about -- a contract isn't automatically legal simply because I sign my name to it. That is true for private sector and public sector jobs -- there are things the government cannot do, even when handing out 'gifts' (ie: jobs). There are even some things private sector jobs cannot do.
For example: your employer cannot require you to sign a contract to continue employment that allows him to sexually harass you.
As far as search and seizure goes: the limit is against unreasonable. The government, no matter what, cannot do unreasonable search and seizures. It can ask, in the form of a contract, for a redefinition of reasonable within a certain scope -- like the military, or the CIA. That makes sense, and is reasonable. But such a contract doesn't say: "you agree to submit to unreasoanble searches whenever we want you to". A justification is necessary -- in the case of the military the justification is obvious. That makes it *reasonable*.
So as far as the topic is concerned: it is an empirical question. It isn't about the ideals of freedom or the limits of governmental power so much as it is about what we, as Americans, think is reasonable for a scientist at NIH to be enduring for our collective security. There are a couple quick ways to answer such a question:
is he being searched more than his peers?
Because if he was; then it is obviously unreasonable: the only justification for enforcing searches on this individual is because of his position. If people in the same position are not being as harassed, then it is obvious that the searches are not being done because of his position, but rather, on some other (until proven reasonable) unreasonable criteria.
So -- no. We do have rights at work. We are not slaves to the corporations or the government -- we are the corporations, we are the government. We are responsible for the definition of reasonable, and for limiting the power our peers (political and business leaders) are allowed to have. If *you* want to sell your freedom for money...then you are welcome to... But that is only legal if we as a majority agree that freedom has a price -- that the 'privilege' of having a job can justify limitations on freedom.
Personally...the cynic inside me would say that that has already happened in this century. That it might not even be repairable without significant violence. That would be truly sad, and I hope that as a collective we will not be so fatalistic as to legitimize our own enslavement.
Yes you do. If you buy a CD, and your car only plays tapes, you're allowed to make a copy. In general, you're allowed to make 1 copy for your own use, and that would include ripping the CD onto your hard drive, but not putting it on any other hard drives.
And why, exactly, would de-pressurization of the plane matter, at all?
If all the people on the plane are going to die -- far better for those deaths to be the *only* deaths. And if no one can breathe, then no one is going to be able to control a flight *into* an occupied area. Now, it might land there randomly, anyway, but not nearly as likely.
And if the terrorist isn't trying to destroy hundreds or thousands of lives, then he doesn't need to fly the plane by himself, and so will be willing to submit to a demand of the pilot making a controlled, safe, landing, if pressured at gunpoint.
Not that that isn't the only possible solution, there are better. Someone mentioned a very thick metal shield separating the cockpit from the passenger cabin, with no access between them. Doesn't seem like a bad idea, at first evaluation. Other ideas would include buttons located in many many places on the airplane that would activate automatic, pre-recorded messages to the effect that the plane is no longer in full control of the pilot. Which, if pressed, with no further contact with airline authorities, would be sure sign that the pilot was dead, or being forced not to engage in further contact. If this was made public knowledge, then any hijacker with demands not including the plane flying into something would certainly allow the pilot to contact air line authorities to cancel the imminent military action. (and obviously, that cancel would only be in effect for as long as the pilot continued to have uninterrupted radio contact)
A further possibility would be to deliberately engineer a partial-self destruct mechanism -- give the pilot the ability to blow the engines off the plane and deploy a parachute of some kind. Yes, while the parachute in many cases would be unable to save the lives of the people in the plane, and the plane could still land on an occupied area -- it is far better than the likely outcomes of allowing a hijacker to take the controls.
Even better would be giving the pilots the ability to complete destroy the navigational and control equipment; so that the plane becomes totally un-guidable. As soon as it is known that hijacker is present, point the plane at the nearest ocean, and destroy all of the controls. (and presumably activate an automatic message reporting that, which couldn't be turned off).
Or, altneratively, bank the plane into a hard turn, engage any other braking mechanisms, cut off all the fuel, and destroy all the controls. The plane will slow down as it turns (because it isn't giving itself forward thrust to compensate) and will slowly descend into the ground. It'll be a crash-landing, but better than many alternatives. And in the cases where it is possible to make a safe-landing, it is still possible to make a safe-landing -- the would-be hijacker simply must make it clear to the pilot (very quickly) that that is all he/she wants. If the hijacker does not with to preserve his/her own life -- then one can quickly presume all on the flight as good as dead.
As far as special relativity is concerned the general consensus is that that would have been formulated within that approxiate time frame (several people had promising work in that direction, some pople say about 3-5 years later for the non-Einsteins). Einstein gets the creds for General Relativity which was a much more complete and robust theory that actually did more than explain some few special exceptions from Newton's Laws, but created (or formulated) an entirely new perspective on the mechanics of the Universe, wholly separated from Newton's Laws.
Most people say that Einstein was way way ahead of his time to be able to come up with General Relativity.
Newton, on the other hand, deserves not at all any innovation award -- For Calculus, there was an independent inventor, a sure sign that neither person was way ahead of their time (Leibniz -- who ahd better notation anyway) -- For Physics he merely stood on the shoulders of Kepler and Galilleo. That achievement is comparable to coming up with Special Relativity -- coming up with an explanation for well-observed, documented, and predictable (ie: have equations for) phenonema, preferably one that explains multiple such phenonma at once. (like planets orbiting and objects falling).
General Relativity does not fit under that category because the theory came before the data -- well well before the data. (For many of the expirements there had to be wierd conditions present, like eclipses over correct spots on the globe). It is the only case I know of (at least in Physics) where anyone has come up with a theory, and then had it verified (since Einstein himself didn't actually do the expirements -- he knew he was right), instead of attempting to theorize about data already collected.
-Lilior
indistinguishable == inability to perceive a difference.
Any technology indistinguishable from magic ==
any technology which cannot be perceived (/classified) differently from magic
is insufficently advanced.
The point being that it is a refutation of the original quote: sufficiently advanced technology would, of necessity, be well understood and explainable to the last microscopic detail. An insufficiently advanced technology is one where there are many unexplained questions and 'magical' effects. The technology of electrical capacitance was insufficiently advanced in ancient times -- capacitors were holy objects with the power to hurt and kill.
Programming on an old, bizarre, system with many acts of 'black magic' is another example of technology, or more generally, knowledge, that is insufficiently advanced -- as it is only partly understood, and therefore 'magical'.
There is an english translation; it is printed by Perseus Books; Metropolitan Books owns the copyright on the english translation (1996). ISBN 0-201-47948-6
your not giving it away for free -- the payment is that they re-release the source code. considering how much one can pay for source code (pay programmers to produce it, or pay other companies for their time) that is quite a hefty price. one could assess damages based on the average price lines of source code are sold for, since that is the payment they are delinquent for (since that is really the major form of distribution, inventing another license one could try to assess damages with it, but if one never sold a single item under that license, it would be more difficult). So go out and do a survey to find out how much the average line of source code costs to purchase from another company -- I would bet that the cost would be high enough that just the length of the GPL code itself would be nasty (esp. at treble damages).
In gradius on the snes the code changed to up up down down LRLR BA start. that gave you a fully powered ship, as if you had picked up a million of the red glowing orbs. I think it also slowly broke the game though, as my game now starts with a grid of white lines on it for almost 10 seconds; it could also be the circuits disintegrating.
why are people bashing lisp so hard? lisp only has parentheses. lots of parentheses. but that should help clarity -- there can be no confusion about what order things are done in.
That's not true for all colleges. I dropped out of high school, and went to community college for a year. At the end of that year ASU mailed me asking me to apply to their school, that they would give me a tuition waver to come there. I think my cumulative HS GPA was a 3.0, with at least two semesters in my sophomore year and junior less than 2.0. I failed my junior year, second semester english class, and stat class. I am _not_ a national merit finalist, but I am a semifinalist. (meaning I was over 99.5% of people on the qualifying test, but they didn't like my essay (which isn't surprising, considering what i wrote)). I did not meet the transfer requirements, I was deficient in foreign languages, at the time of admission. Yet I currently attend ASU. In the honors college no less. So not all colleges hate the sore thumb...I'd wager that many engineering/science schools are even more accepting, knowing that the smartest, brightest, and most likely to succeed, come from very different backgrounds. Jobs, Gates, for two quick examples. You might have to look harder -- many of the ivy league schools probably do fit that description. But I've found that whenever a system is run by humans it is possible to 'socially engineer' a way around the beaurocracy. Just have to be willing to keep on going up levels until you find someone who understands you.
Think of this as currency exchange -- Francs to dollars for example. Find anyone willing to claim a given exchange rate, for all time. All money nowadays isn't based on anything other than trust, faith, mass belief and the sort. Used to be the dollar had a value in gold and silver, nowadays the only way to measure it would be to compare the prices of common items, and try to statistically correct for technological improvements making the cost to manufacture go down. Mojo is a different currency system, which represents the various costs of computing, time bandwidth storage, etc. How that is going to relate to dollars is going to fluctuate wildly as new levels of ability are reached by engineers. if we apply moore's law then I would assume that mojo would have an insanely fast increasing exchange rate to dollars (that is, more and more mojo required for a dollar). Of course that depends on how mojo is measured (percentage of the system, or credits with no limit).
rofl....i don't have the +1 ;). Then again, I don't try. But still, it's nice to set up mirrors for stuff. Even if the intent was karma whoring, i don't think it deserves name-calling. No reason to discourage behaivour which makes the world an easier nicer place.
battlebots, for one, restricts what weapons you can use, and EMP is on that list. In fact just about everything interesting is on that list. Lasers above 1 mW, liquids, adhesives, entanglement (but not entrapment) devices, heat weapons (flamethrowers, etc.), explosives, guns (untethered projectiles of any kind, tethered up to 10' ft.). About the only things you can do are shove, punch, drill, saw, and grind.
The bot that i would make would use suction cups, or a material like iguana skin, to latch on, lift the bot up, and drill into the bottom. (for spite, just holding it still for 30 seconds wins, as well as having a backup weapon should someone manage to cut off the attachment device. (which would be armored, at least lightly)).
On a sidenote: beer cans made of titanium. Like to see people crush those in one hand. (and keep it that way) ;).
3 * 9.8 Newtons of force. g = 9.8 kg*m/s^2 (N)
Just a title I haven't seen anyone mention:
Gall Force - Space, all females (cloning), the series that got me into anime. Has a sequel that's set on Earth with a title i can't remember. (something fairly similiar though)
Doh, accidentally submitted.
If we just use 'programmer', then there won't be a one-word way of specifying the skill and/or style of the person. We would always have to waste an appositive phrase or another sentence to further specify the programmer's ability.
Very similiar to coding a project -- you can make functions, thereby making your top-level function somewhat readable and coherent -- or just code the whole thing as one function that does EVERYTHING (and therefore, has highly redudant sections, such as everytime you printed)
Humans are much more forgiving than computers, however, and can accept multiple definitions for single words and attempt to resolve it by context, and in many cases this works beautifully.
Experience shows that that is not happening -- many people confuse the terms, and many more believe the wrong meaning, and there is much confusion generated between the two groups of people using different definitions. Or -- if there isn't confusion -- there is bitter sarcasm and flaming, which doesn't really improve our image. So therefore, a discussion on what should be done about 'hacker' is completey appropiate -- whether to replace it with something just as specific and with the right connotations, or to press onwards and make the masses submit to our definitions.
-Lilior
P.S. Personally, I think almost all arguments result from improperly defined terms. Certainlly all the really long and stupid arguments.
It's not pointless --
Language is used to differenctiate between different objects -- hence we don't use 'container' to describe boxes, crates, purses, wallets, nuclear storage tanks, fanny packs, pocket protectors, camping bags, tents, houses, backpacks, notebooks, etc. unless we're just trying to highlight the 'container' aspect of the box, crate, etc.
This is probably still really expensive, but there are companies that have researched anti-sound devices, to be used on ocean-going steamers, and large factories. The idea is to take in samples from some ambient sound source, such as some random large engine, and flip the wave upside-down, and spit that out. The two waves overlap and the result is pure quiet. The really cool thing is that it can only work on a fairly constant sound source, since the technology isn't fast enough to read in the sound source produce the wave and spit out the anti-wave at the same velocity as the original -- which means that conversation can still be heard. (you could, in theory, set it up so that it could block conversation -- but why?) Keep on the lookout for it in the next few years, i'm betting companies will start making prototypes for airplanes and such.