Have you noticed how that all terrestrial colonization has been targeted at land masses? There were no initial offshore colonies. The ships went to islands but nobody considered building a permanent floating colony. Why not?
There are big problems with floating colonies, be they offshore or offworld. There's nothing there to build with nor to build upon. All shelter, all living space, and all defensive fortification would have to be imported, even dirt. It would be inherently more dangerous than anything on solid ground because land bases don't crash into things. Without any large mass to use as a shield, floating platforms are at the mercy of the storms, atmospheric or solar.
So I think that an orbital colony is not as practical as a lunar colony. At the very least, they'd be able to dig in and use the surface matter as a shield against radiation. It just seems like a tremendously bad idea to try establishing a "colony" in a location with no natural resources.
'The red color in apple skin is the result of anthocyanins, the natural plant compounds responsible for blue and red colours in many flowers and fruits,' says the leader of the CSIRO.
A new Wikipedia study suggests that when experts and non-experts look to assess Wikipedia for accuracy, the non-experts are harder on the free encyclopedia than the experts.
I just hope that those non-experts didn't feel the urge to "fix" anything.
This terrorist-hunter-killer robo-wasp reminds me of the firemen's "dog" from Fahrenheit 451. It had poisoned fangs and hunted someone down by the scent of their DNA.
...except if the intended victim, er terrorist got away they would send it after some random bystander in a poorly-lit area so they could show the "mission accomplished" kill scene on the evening news.
But that would never really happen, right?
(Of course, when I first read the book back in 1974 everyone thought there would never really be dog-sized hunter-killer robots.)
I think one of the major concerns in the article was about lead time. From what I've heard, ever since the hurricane season last year Generac has had much shorter lead times than competitors.
Since our MPS allows different sizes of generators to work together, a customer will never hear our sales people say, "Oh, we don't have any of that size available..." The bigger the installation, the more possible configurations there can be.
You don't want a single, big, expensive generator which may or may not fire up when you need it. You want back-up generation with the same high-availability low-cost characteristics as your server farm.
"There is a need for a comprehensive, multilingual database of theories, experimental results, and their interdependencies."
You are free to join the existing "database" by educating yourself as to what science is/isn't.
That's the same, lame response I always get. "Go read the published material." That's essentially like telling someone to "go read the web without a search engine."
Digging through yellowing documents and hunting down all their bibliographical references by hand is NOT the best way to do science any more.
I'm not contesting the facts, I'm trying to point out that a hierarchical or dependency-related organization of that knowledge is necessary... especially for educational purposes.
Some new idea is proposed, predicting some outcome from some set of conditions. Over what range of conditions does this apply? Over what range of conditions has it been tested and to what accuracy, or what concrete evidence appears to support it? Who did the testing or found the evidenced, where, and how?
If a comprehensive, organized database of information like this existed for public reference, scientific theories wouldn't have to stand on reputation or belief and perhaps science textbooks could include a link to up-to-date errata published on the web.
Because such a system doesn't exist, old theories which have been demonstrably falsified tend to hang around forever. Have you seen advertisements for "magnetic healing" products? Did you know that Benjamin Franklin published his research showing that those products had no effect about 200 years ago?
We need a database of scientific knowledge, showing the "why" and the "how" and the "how certain" of each part along with what other parts they depend upon.
Is it really such a bad thing if the Chinese government tries to block big-media news? International communication on an interpersonal level is so easy now that I doubt the Chinese people will really be left in the dark... even if their government forces them to pretend that they are.
When one tracks an animal or a person, one typically starts from the last known certainty. "It was here, maybe yesterday."
Why don't we have the same expectations with all this investigation of origins? Why does everyone seem to be starting with some "In the beginning..." belief?
An investigation of the past from existing evidence should result in an expanding tree of possible causes. "This layer of rock could have been deposited over milions of years or in a single cataclysm." All possible causes should be explored until logically eliminated. (e.g. finding "wrinkled" or "twisted" layers of rock without fractures would eliminate the possibility that the layers solidified before the distortion.)
Where is the hierarchy of this knowledge? Is there a database which gets updated when some part is expanded or falsified?
I'm not an advocate of Creationism, but they DO make one point that should sink in... There is no mechanism for maintaining the pedigree of scientific information.
We say that the speed of light is a constant in all frames of reference. How was that measured? What assumptions did those measurements depend upon? If I think I've come up with something which defies the laws of physics (like a perpetual motion machine or something), how do I find out which experimental results it would seem to contradict?
There is a need for a comprehensive, multilingual database of theories, experimental results, and their interdependencies.
I remember back in 1998 when I first had to mess with the cd writer code to add support for refrigerator-sized CD/DVD archive devices. My change was very small, just a device description really. I thought it was kind of weird that it required some other tool instead of the usual gmake but in the install guide Jorg pretty much said that he liked it that way, so there! It was annoying.
Even then, I thought it wouldn't take much to convert it over to a more standard build tool like GNU make. Why Jorg has to be such a stick-in-the-mud for a proprietary build tool is a puzzle to me... unless maybe he wrote it.
I really like the way that Slashdot polls usually work. The "CowboyNeal" option is great!
A significant CowboyNeal response says either that people aren't taking the question seriously, or that they don't like any of the ordinary options. It's a good indicator of the quality of the question and of the responses.
This reminds me of a recent discussion I overheard here at work, yesterday. Some vendors were talking about an experiment they had heard of, where an entire office building was converted from fluorescent lighting over to LED lights. They claimed that the long-term cost was higher for LEDs due to an unexpected increase in heating costs, since the ballasts from the fluorescents had been helping to heat the building in the winter.
Here in Wisconsin, the heat "wasted" by computer systems isn't a complete loss during cold weather (which is the larger portion of the year). Yes, it's more expensive than using the heating system, but it may not be enough of a difference to justify the expense of non-standard equipment.
I agree. The most effective camera in situations like this would automatically send every photo, video, and voice note to the web site or e-mail address of your choice as soon as you hit the shutter button.
This is exactly the sort of thing that mobile phones should be able to do, since they already contain the necessary hardware. Nevertheless, a laptop could be programmed to scan a USB-connected camera and upload new files as soon as it can connect to a wireless network. In cities where ubiquitous wireless coverage is being planned, this would be a snap! (Pun intended.)
Do you think that the artists aren't aware of what their "label" and the RIAA are doing? Of course they're aware, and they're hoping that they'll get paid as a result! Do you think that the artist doesn't wish you would just buy the stupid album? No matter what they say, if they're producing through RIAA-associated labels then they are hoping to reap RIAA-associated benefits.
Avoid listening to RIAA-related music, and certainly avoid playing it in public. Don't give them free publicity and don't tempt yourself. The RIAA doesn't have any "secret sauce" to make their music special anyway.
Seek non-RIAA music. It doesn't have to be "indie" music, just find something you like that isn't paying dues to the RIAA. If you're a fan of a particular artist, you could send a letter to their publisher encouraging them to drop their membership in the RIAA.
Make your own music. Sing, hum, whistle, play an instrument (A radio is NOT a musical instrument!) and the more the merrier. And yes, you can. Even a stupid bird can sing, so make some noise.
The article's author, while lamenting the fact that Microsoft has just accused him of a federal crime, simply responds with a sigh and a recommendation that we should all get used to the idea.
"Ah well."
EXCUSE ME?!?No.
This guy has already decided to go with the lemming mentality. He figures that lots of people will have this problem, so why worry? That's what people thought about the RIAA's threats too, until the lawsuits started.
Apparently, the perjorative word which got used instead of the real word for Catalan actually signifies someone of Polish descent. Something like calling someone a "Polack" in some areas of the US used to be when I was a kid.
How hypocritical is it that people of Catalan culture would consider the name of another culture as "offensive"? Maybe the author who made the mistake should, instead of apologising, replace the word in question with the Catalan word for "BIGOT".
Is anyone else wondering why someone would be trying to break into the development server of the Debian distribution?
Maybe someone is trying to "own" every Debian-based machine by slipping their own "minor bug" into it undetected.
This is where distributed, public-key-signed version control (like in monotone) would save the day. No one would be able to sneak something into the version-control archive because all change packets are uniquely identified and signed with a developer's public key.
No, $1 bills are just as difficult to counterfeit as any of the older USonian bills. Aside from that, they have the advantage that nobody wastes their time making convincing counterfeits of small bills.
Admittedly, small bills from other countries would be more secure but I'd avoid anything new like the Euro notes. Since every country in the EU is allowed to customize their currency, people don't have a solid idea of what they look like. There was a recent example where a marketing firm produced fake euro notes with pr0n on them and the things were being accepted at face value in stores. Something well-established would be better, which is why I suggested the dollar.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, companies could use an existing "certificate" with built-in anti-counterfeit measures... common paper currency.
For example...
To complete your registration, label an ordinary envelope,
"WidgiCorp SuperApp Registration". Then choose a [US]$1.00 bill
and enter the full serial number from that bill: _________________
Press the "Register Now" button to send the serial number.
Put this bill into the envelope and store it with your copy of
the license agreement. This serial number will be added to a
publicly accessible list of registrations so that posession of
this bill will prove that you have licensed this software.
And there you have a counterfeit-resistant, anonymous, verifiable proof of registration.
CleanIneter.net, a "christian" filtering service, uses an animated gif on their "BLOCKED!" page. It looks like a security camera which is pointing at the blocked URL and then it swings up to look out at you!
It's surprisingly disconcerting, despite the fact that I've seen it so often. I guess a lot of words in Esperanto look like naughty words in English... like "Asia Carrera" which I swear only means "Taiwanese Automotive Parts".;-)
Bidding, which other users can see, will force the final sale price up. That's pretty obviously not in the best interest of the buyer.
Disclosing what you're willing to pay for an item will allow anyone else to out-bid you. That's also an obvious disadvantage for the buyer.
Waiting until the last moment to make a single bid is like a secret bidding process. It eliminates the preliminary competition and lets people bid based on what they would feel comfortable paying for the item. Everyone knows that other people will be bidding too, so they will tend to be generous with their bid in proportion to the amount of competition they imagine there will be.
Does e-bay already offer a "secret bid" auction? I think that would be the best system.
I understand your annoyance - by the current definition of a "reproductively distinct population" the various races of man were different "species" until the advent of large scale immigration - which caused all these species to collapse into a single species.
Okay, so show me the scientist who will publicly say that Europeans and Africans were separate "species", and ask them when they think the species "merged". No, the fact is that so-called scientists are using whichever definition is most convenient for their purpose at the time. That is what annoys me.
In Real Science(tm), they stick with the original definition and say "Hmmm, well I guess the grey wolf, red wolf, coyote, jackal, and dog really aren't separate species, just drastically different breeds." Or else they should apply the same reasoning to everything else and say that europeans, asians and africans are still separate species. Pick one definition and quit flipping back and forth as if people weren't biologically just as classifyable as animals.
Personally, I think we should stick with the old definition. All people are the same species. Dogs, coyotes, jackals, and wolves can interbreed so they're all one species. etc.
When I went to school, the word "species" signified the widest variation of biologic form which could interbreed to create fertile offspring. A horse and a donkey, for example, were considered to be different 'species' because although the could be interbred, their offspring were (99.9999%) infertile and could not reproduce "after their own kind."
Speciation is not determined by the organisms' willingness to interbreed but by whether or not a cross-breed between them can be genetically viable.
Now though, biologists go out in the field and see some plant or animal which only appears to be different in form or behavior, and they go ahead and call it a "new species" without testing whether or not it can be interbred. I can understand that they don't have the resources to test such things all the time but that's no excuse for claiming that it's a new species. Look at domestic dogs, how drastically different they are... but they can all be interbred; they're all dogs. Then look at bears. Grizzly bears and polar bears are presented as separate species but zookeepers have known for decades that they can interbreed and now they've found instances of wild grizzly-polar half-breeds. The half-breeds are fertile. They are clearly of the same "species".
So, do they correct their books? Do they revise the texts? No.
These aren't real scientists, they're egotists pressing for the status quo and presenting evidence against their beliefs as though it were something nearly impossible.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you noticed how that all terrestrial colonization has been targeted at land masses? There were no initial offshore colonies. The ships went to islands but nobody considered building a permanent floating colony. Why not?
There are big problems with floating colonies, be they offshore or offworld. There's nothing there to build with nor to build upon. All shelter, all living space, and all defensive fortification would have to be imported, even dirt. It would be inherently more dangerous than anything on solid ground because land bases don't crash into things. Without any large mass to use as a shield, floating platforms are at the mercy of the storms, atmospheric or solar.
So I think that an orbital colony is not as practical as a lunar colony. At the very least, they'd be able to dig in and use the surface matter as a shield against radiation. It just seems like a tremendously bad idea to try establishing a "colony" in a location with no natural resources.
How long before we see blue apples?
I just hope that those non-experts didn't feel the urge to "fix" anything.
This terrorist-hunter-killer robo-wasp reminds me of the firemen's "dog" from Fahrenheit 451. It had poisoned fangs and hunted someone down by the scent of their DNA.
But that would never really happen, right?
(Of course, when I first read the book back in 1974 everyone thought there would never really be dog-sized hunter-killer robots.)
I think one of the major concerns in the article was about lead time. From what I've heard, ever since the hurricane season last year Generac has had much shorter lead times than competitors.
Since our MPS allows different sizes of generators to work together, a customer will never hear our sales people say, "Oh, we don't have any of that size available..." The bigger the installation, the more possible configurations there can be.
What are you thinking?!?
You don't want a single, big, expensive generator which may or may not fire up when you need it. You want back-up generation with the same high-availability low-cost characteristics as your server farm.
You want Generac Power Systems' Modular Power System (MPS).
Yes, I'm totally biased. I helped design the controllers.
-- Rick Miller, Software Engineer. (See "/usr/src/linux/CREDITS")
No... but I talk with them every day. How 'bout you?
That's the same, lame response I always get. "Go read the published material." That's essentially like telling someone to "go read the web without a search engine."
Digging through yellowing documents and hunting down all their bibliographical references by hand is NOT the best way to do science any more.
I'm not contesting the facts, I'm trying to point out that a hierarchical or dependency-related organization of that knowledge is necessary... especially for educational purposes.
Some new idea is proposed, predicting some outcome from some set of conditions. Over what range of conditions does this apply? Over what range of conditions has it been tested and to what accuracy, or what concrete evidence appears to support it? Who did the testing or found the evidenced, where, and how?
If a comprehensive, organized database of information like this existed for public reference, scientific theories wouldn't have to stand on reputation or belief and perhaps science textbooks could include a link to up-to-date errata published on the web.
Because such a system doesn't exist, old theories which have been demonstrably falsified tend to hang around forever. Have you seen advertisements for "magnetic healing" products? Did you know that Benjamin Franklin published his research showing that those products had no effect about 200 years ago?
We need a database of scientific knowledge, showing the "why" and the "how" and the "how certain" of each part along with what other parts they depend upon.
Is it really such a bad thing if the Chinese government tries to block big-media news? International communication on an interpersonal level is so easy now that I doubt the Chinese people will really be left in the dark... even if their government forces them to pretend that they are.
"Big Bang", whatever.
When one tracks an animal or a person, one typically starts from the last known certainty. "It was here, maybe yesterday."
Why don't we have the same expectations with all this investigation of origins? Why does everyone seem to be starting with some "In the beginning..." belief?
An investigation of the past from existing evidence should result in an expanding tree of possible causes. "This layer of rock could have been deposited over milions of years or in a single cataclysm." All possible causes should be explored until logically eliminated. (e.g. finding "wrinkled" or "twisted" layers of rock without fractures would eliminate the possibility that the layers solidified before the distortion.)
Where is the hierarchy of this knowledge? Is there a database which gets updated when some part is expanded or falsified?
I'm not an advocate of Creationism, but they DO make one point that should sink in... There is no mechanism for maintaining the pedigree of scientific information.
We say that the speed of light is a constant in all frames of reference. How was that measured? What assumptions did those measurements depend upon? If I think I've come up with something which defies the laws of physics (like a perpetual motion machine or something), how do I find out which experimental results it would seem to contradict?
There is a need for a comprehensive, multilingual database of theories, experimental results, and their interdependencies.
I remember back in 1998 when I first had to mess with the cd writer code to add support for refrigerator-sized CD/DVD archive devices. My change was very small, just a device description really. I thought it was kind of weird that it required some other tool instead of the usual gmake but in the install guide Jorg pretty much said that he liked it that way, so there! It was annoying.
Even then, I thought it wouldn't take much to convert it over to a more standard build tool like GNU make. Why Jorg has to be such a stick-in-the-mud for a proprietary build tool is a puzzle to me... unless maybe he wrote it.
I really like the way that Slashdot polls usually work. The "CowboyNeal" option is great!
A significant CowboyNeal response says either that people aren't taking the question seriously, or that they don't like any of the ordinary options. It's a good indicator of the quality of the question and of the responses.
This reminds me of a recent discussion I overheard here at work, yesterday. Some vendors were talking about an experiment they had heard of, where an entire office building was converted from fluorescent lighting over to LED lights. They claimed that the long-term cost was higher for LEDs due to an unexpected increase in heating costs, since the ballasts from the fluorescents had been helping to heat the building in the winter.
Here in Wisconsin, the heat "wasted" by computer systems isn't a complete loss during cold weather (which is the larger portion of the year). Yes, it's more expensive than using the heating system, but it may not be enough of a difference to justify the expense of non-standard equipment.
I agree. The most effective camera in situations like this would automatically send every photo, video, and voice note to the web site or e-mail address of your choice as soon as you hit the shutter button.
This is exactly the sort of thing that mobile phones should be able to do, since they already contain the necessary hardware. Nevertheless, a laptop could be programmed to scan a USB-connected camera and upload new files as soon as it can connect to a wireless network. In cities where ubiquitous wireless coverage is being planned, this would be a snap! (Pun intended.)
Do you think that the artists aren't aware of what their "label" and the RIAA are doing? Of course they're aware, and they're hoping that they'll get paid as a result! Do you think that the artist doesn't wish you would just buy the stupid album? No matter what they say, if they're producing through RIAA-associated labels then they are hoping to reap RIAA-associated benefits.
The article's author, while lamenting the fact that Microsoft has just accused him of a federal crime, simply responds with a sigh and a recommendation that we should all get used to the idea.
EXCUSE ME?!? No.
This guy has already decided to go with the lemming mentality. He figures that lots of people will have this problem, so why worry? That's what people thought about the RIAA's threats too, until the lawsuits started.
Apparently, the perjorative word which got used instead of the real word for Catalan actually signifies someone of Polish descent. Something like calling someone a "Polack" in some areas of the US used to be when I was a kid.
How hypocritical is it that people of Catalan culture would consider the name of another culture as "offensive"? Maybe the author who made the mistake should, instead of apologising, replace the word in question with the Catalan word for "BIGOT".
Is anyone else wondering why someone would be trying to break into the development server of the Debian distribution?
Maybe someone is trying to "own" every Debian-based machine by slipping their own "minor bug" into it undetected.
This is where distributed, public-key-signed version control (like in monotone) would save the day. No one would be able to sneak something into the version-control archive because all change packets are uniquely identified and signed with a developer's public key.
No, $1 bills are just as difficult to counterfeit as any of the older USonian bills. Aside from that, they have the advantage that nobody wastes their time making convincing counterfeits of small bills.
Admittedly, small bills from other countries would be more secure but I'd avoid anything new like the Euro notes. Since every country in the EU is allowed to customize their currency, people don't have a solid idea of what they look like. There was a recent example where a marketing firm produced fake euro notes with pr0n on them and the things were being accepted at face value in stores. Something well-established would be better, which is why I suggested the dollar.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, companies could use an existing "certificate" with built-in anti-counterfeit measures... common paper currency.
For example...
And there you have a counterfeit-resistant, anonymous, verifiable proof of registration.
CleanIneter.net, a "christian" filtering service, uses an animated gif on their "BLOCKED!" page. It looks like a security camera which is pointing at the blocked URL and then it swings up to look out at you!
It's surprisingly disconcerting, despite the fact that I've seen it so often. I guess a lot of words in Esperanto look like naughty words in English... like "Asia Carrera" which I swear only means "Taiwanese Automotive Parts". ;-)
Bidding, which other users can see, will force the final sale price up. That's pretty obviously not in the best interest of the buyer.
Disclosing what you're willing to pay for an item will allow anyone else to out-bid you. That's also an obvious disadvantage for the buyer.
Waiting until the last moment to make a single bid is like a secret bidding process. It eliminates the preliminary competition and lets people bid based on what they would feel comfortable paying for the item. Everyone knows that other people will be bidding too, so they will tend to be generous with their bid in proportion to the amount of competition they imagine there will be.
Does e-bay already offer a "secret bid" auction? I think that would be the best system.
Okay, so show me the scientist who will publicly say that Europeans and Africans were separate "species", and ask them when they think the species "merged". No, the fact is that so-called scientists are using whichever definition is most convenient for their purpose at the time. That is what annoys me.
In Real Science(tm), they stick with the original definition and say "Hmmm, well I guess the grey wolf, red wolf, coyote, jackal, and dog really aren't separate species, just drastically different breeds." Or else they should apply the same reasoning to everything else and say that europeans, asians and africans are still separate species. Pick one definition and quit flipping back and forth as if people weren't biologically just as classifyable as animals.
Personally, I think we should stick with the old definition. All people are the same species. Dogs, coyotes, jackals, and wolves can interbreed so they're all one species. etc.
When I went to school, the word "species" signified the widest variation of biologic form which could interbreed to create fertile offspring. A horse and a donkey, for example, were considered to be different 'species' because although the could be interbred, their offspring were (99.9999%) infertile and could not reproduce "after their own kind."
Speciation is not determined by the organisms' willingness to interbreed but by whether or not a cross-breed between them can be genetically viable.
Now though, biologists go out in the field and see some plant or animal which only appears to be different in form or behavior, and they go ahead and call it a "new species" without testing whether or not it can be interbred. I can understand that they don't have the resources to test such things all the time but that's no excuse for claiming that it's a new species. Look at domestic dogs, how drastically different they are... but they can all be interbred; they're all dogs. Then look at bears. Grizzly bears and polar bears are presented as separate species but zookeepers have known for decades that they can interbreed and now they've found instances of wild grizzly-polar half-breeds. The half-breeds are fertile. They are clearly of the same "species".
So, do they correct their books? Do they revise the texts?
No.
These aren't real scientists, they're egotists pressing for the status quo and presenting evidence against their beliefs as though it were something nearly impossible.