I'd say that yours is an apt comparison, but "Punch Drunk Love" was one of the deepest movies to come out of Hollywood in the last couple years. And of course it was completely lost on Adam Sandler fans, but that's beside the point.
Completely OT, but I have to agree with you 100%. Sandler did a great job in that movie. I could practically feel the tension and stress radiating from his character. Excellent movie.
Actually, nothing ever truly 'contacts' anything else. There's a small amount of space between all atoms, and they don't really touch. Sorry, I know it feels like we touch stuff, and it looks like stuff is solid and/or touching, but it isn't.
Not quite true, acutally. While the matter that you and I interact with on a daily basis is held apart by electromagnetic interactions, there do exist some species of matter that are held apart primarily by the pauli exclusion principle. The atoms in this type of matter can be said to be 'touching'.
I remember trying to put plastic containers in a field to use as markers for trees (long story) and after about 2 years had to be replaced as they had decomposed
1) Some plastics are designed to decompose.
2) Most plastics that aren't designed to decompose... don't. Instead they undergo weathering by the elements and 'vanish' as they are ground down by sun, wind, rain, and snow into plastic dust which then remains in the environment for hundreds/thousands of years. This is a worldwide problem.
This flies against all the enviromentalists saying they will stay here forever
It flies against nothing. Just because something is too small for you to see does not mean that it is 'gone'. Weathering does not equal decomposition. Choice quote from the BBC article: "...this study suggests that practically everything really is made of plastic these days - even the oceans."
>Gmail invite was sent, enjoy. If you already have one, pass it along. Peace.
Within hours of my original post I received no less than 4 invites and 1 offer of an invite. THANK YOU SLASHDOT PEOPLE! To pass on the good faith, when I start getting invites I'll give some away in my sig.
BTW: every single one of the invites was classified as 'bulk mail' (spam) by yahoo's filter
Completely offtopic, but you just reminded me of something... back in uni we did group projects, and one semester's worth of work was the implementation of a simple programming language that the professor had dubbed PISH.
At the end of the semester, the prof handed out awards in a multitude of categories and he eventually announced "...and most flagrant violation of spec goes to group 7 for the name of their compiled binary...PISHit..."
It can, however, record to unprotected AAC (compressed) or AIFF (lossless - I'm pretty sure). AIFF has been used for years, predominantly on the mac, and many utilities are available to easily convert AIFF into whatever format your heart desires.
A gamers PDA would be a good way to market the DS to an adult crowd
All Nintendo really has to do is license the PalmOS and stick it on a cart. The PalmOS runs on ARM processors, and that's exactly what's going to be in the DS. It would take some tweaking, but I imagine that they could pull it off. They would need to stick at least 2 megs (or preferably 8+) of flash in the cart, though.
You've got the touchscreen function. Two screens could display more info than one screen. With wireless sync you wouldn't even need a cable.
>But one of creationists main arguments against evolution has always been that complex design implies an intelligent designer.
I would argue that any complex design requires an intelligent creator. A complex system (such as life), on the other hand, is apparently capable of spontaneously arising under nearly any circumstance where mass amounts of energy seek to become less ordered.
>The effectiveness of GAs simply disintegrates that argument.
Genetic algorithms are capable of producing apparently simple (yet stunningly clever) answers which can be conceptually thought of as a route through a (generally) complex solution space. In a nutshell, simplicity is mapped from complexity.
Although I am certainly NOT a creationist, a creationist would argue, as I do, that simple GAs are not capable of producing the complexty of nature that we see around us. So unfortunately the argument for GAs does little to help our cause.
...but to admit the possiblity that the big bang happened is to admit that God might not exist. It's more than just a theory to me, it's paradigm shifting without a clutch. Which is why I want *absolute proof* for me to even approach believing in the Big Bang....
I'm sorry but I don't understand.
Couldn't God, in his infinite wisdom, have instigated the big bang? If you answer yes, then what's you problem with believing it? If you say no, then aren't you implying that God is not all-powerful?
From this angle, it looks like your faith throws up no serious roadblocks between you and a belief in the big bang. I fail to see how moving the (conceptual) point where God started his work invalidates your belief system.
I like genetic programming. I like the whole concept of genetic algorithms (GA). However, I think you are stretching things a little when you say they can be used to prove macroevolution. The fact that GAs provide a different way of tackling problems does not imply that this is the same way that nature tackles problems. GAs can be 'scary' until you understand them. Once you realize that any 'odd' results coming from them are necessarilly encoded in the solution space which you've provided, they get a lot less spooky.
We computer people tend to be myopic. I used to think that GAs provided a good analogy to biological evolution processes, too, but I now believe that there is a heck of a lot more going on in nature than GAs - and more than can ever be accounted for by GAs alone. There are deeper biological layers of complexity and processes at work here.
Use it to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen...of course storing massive quantities of hydrogen might be a little dangerous.
Splitting water and storing as a gas is not an efficient way of doing things.
Because hydrogen is such a small atom, when stored as a gas, hydrogen leaks out of almost any container at a significant rate (I seem to remember ~10% per day).
When bonded to metal and stored as a metal hydride, hydrogen is incredibly heavy, and this is not a very efficient means of storage.
When bonded to carbon, you get various fossil fuels. This is the most efficient way of storing massive quantities of hydrogen at the current time. And yes, it is dangerous.
"...In practical terms, that would spell the end of encryption as we know it. The Internet would be vulnerable to hackers and computer viruses... "
heh.
While we're OT, here's a little piece of fiction that I encountered on kuro5hin once, about what would happen if a large corporation were to locate an NP-oracle.
But if you use continuous flow, then the arteries gain one more similarity to veins, and so arteries may start suffering from the problems you mention, which normally only occur in veins.
I would think this to be unlikely, given that arteries are considerably more robust than veins. Arteries are reinforced as they have to carry a pressure load whereas veins, carrying relatively little pressure load, generally are not.
You had me fooled until you got to the metallic object and space pen.
A few years ago, my girlfriend at the time and I went for a walk in the arboreteum at my university. We climbed up onto the roof of one of the buildings, and lay back to watch the meteors.
The shower had just started, the girl had just de-topped, and we'd just started kissing when one of the Kampus Kops climbed the ladder and found us. He was cool - but he kicked us out of the arboreteum (after getting a good look at my girlfriend's rack, of course).
>>>Yes, I play this way. I put all my pawns on their row in random order >>Um, that'd be the second row... unless you're counting from zero? >It's a matter of perspective. I thought it was funny, because when I saw first row, I was thinking the same thing he was...
You guys are really splitting semantics here.
If you want to split them even more, realize that there is no such thing as "random order". (Randomness here precluding the notion of order, it would be more correct to say "in a random fashion" or "at random")
In Alberta those "large supplies of drinking water" come mainly from the melting glaciers in the Rocky Mountains. The glaciers are disapearing at such a rate that soon our river flows will only be a fraction of that in the past.
Alberta? Are you guys still there? We out east don't give a flying f... OH WAIT, I mean we love the west! We really care about... those things... that are going on... out there. Good luck with them. Whatever they are.
(Kidding! Kidding! Just playing the eastern stereotype!) I have some friends who just moved out there there to lake louise, btw, and they're liking every minute of it. Well, actually they're not. They got suckered into one of those work-at-a-hotel-for-the-summer-and-get-paid-zilch jobs.
They do nothing but wash dishes. For eight hours a night, from 10pm to 6am. For minimum wage. Six nights a week.
The province is beautiful, but they never get to see any of it. I guess they learned a lesson: look before you leap.
Slashdot Mirror
And how do you watch the screen with the phone pressed to your ear?
I imagine that a combination of sidetalkin + small mirror would provide an adequate solution...
I'd say that yours is an apt comparison, but "Punch Drunk Love" was one of the deepest movies to come out of Hollywood in the last couple years. And of course it was completely lost on Adam Sandler fans, but that's beside the point.
Completely OT, but I have to agree with you 100%. Sandler did a great job in that movie. I could practically feel the tension and stress radiating from his character.
Excellent movie.
Some sort of electronic/optical flash system that
So what are you waiting for? I'm pretty sure that this fits the bill, and it's been out for years.
FWIW, I remember the 52-in-one cartridge being marketed as the "51 and 1 in one".
Just a tidbit of useless info.
Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of 256 disembodied rat brains? (My first "traditional" slashdot joke.)
More importantly, can you imagine a cubic metre of brain matter computing? What would the IQ be on that, and would it be sentient by nature?
Soon we will all be augmented by our extra brain bags! Organic computers in a purse that we either wear or have implanted in our abdomens
To quote the work of Scott Adams...
Dogbert: (Talking to PHB at the office) The dogbert consulting company will plot a new course for your business
Dogbert: My consultants are so smart that their brains don't fit in their heads. They have to strap the extra brains to their torsos.
Ratbert: (Later at home) Why do I need a piece of liver strapped to my torso?
Dogbert: I got a little carried away at the pitch meeting.
Actually, nothing ever truly 'contacts' anything else. There's a small amount of space between all atoms, and they don't really touch. Sorry, I know it feels like we touch stuff, and it looks like stuff is solid and/or touching, but it isn't.
Not quite true, acutally. While the matter that you and I interact with on a daily basis is held apart by electromagnetic interactions, there do exist some species of matter that are held apart primarily by the pauli exclusion principle. The atoms in this type of matter can be said to be 'touching'.
surely there is a possibility that a monoatomic filament would simply pass through solid matter without contacting it??
The Pauli exclusion principle begs to differ.
"Far Side" cartoonist Gary Larson had a bug named after him when one of his fans discovered it. It is a species of louse called
Here's a link, with pic, of the bug in question: Strigiphilus garylarsoni
And, because the first link is on an AOL user's page: Google cache of Link
I remember trying to put plastic containers in a field to use as markers for trees (long story) and after about 2 years had to be replaced as they had decomposed
1) Some plastics are designed to decompose.
2) Most plastics that aren't designed to decompose... don't. Instead they undergo weathering by the elements and 'vanish' as they are ground down by sun, wind, rain, and snow into plastic dust which then remains in the environment for hundreds/thousands of years. This is a worldwide problem.
This flies against all the enviromentalists saying they will stay here forever
It flies against nothing. Just because something is too small for you to see does not mean that it is 'gone'. Weathering does not equal decomposition. Choice quote from the BBC article: "...this study suggests that practically everything really is made of plastic these days - even the oceans."
>Gmail invite was sent, enjoy. If you already have one, pass it along. Peace.
Within hours of my original post I received no less than 4 invites and 1 offer of an invite. THANK YOU SLASHDOT PEOPLE!
To pass on the good faith, when I start getting invites I'll give some away in my sig.
BTW: every single one of the invites was classified as 'bulk mail' (spam) by yahoo's filter
Would that make him a shIT manager?
Completely offtopic, but you just reminded me of something... back in uni we did group projects, and one semester's worth of work was the implementation of a simple programming language that the professor had dubbed PISH.
At the end of the semester, the prof handed out awards in a multitude of categories and he eventually announced "...and most flagrant violation of spec goes to group 7 for the name of their compiled binary...PISHit..."
Ahhh... good times...
--
Seeking gmail invite - Please help!
redcard411@yahoo.NO_SPAM.com
Can it record to MP3 or Vorbis?
RTFA.
Answer: No.
It can, however, record to unprotected AAC (compressed) or AIFF (lossless - I'm pretty sure). AIFF has been used for years, predominantly on the mac, and many utilities are available to easily convert AIFF into whatever format your heart desires.
A gamers PDA would be a good way to market the DS to an adult crowd
All Nintendo really has to do is license the PalmOS and stick it on a cart. The PalmOS runs on ARM processors, and that's exactly what's going to be in the DS. It would take some tweaking, but I imagine that they could pull it off. They would need to stick at least 2 megs (or preferably 8+) of flash in the cart, though.
You've got the touchscreen function. Two screens could display more info than one screen. With wireless sync you wouldn't even need a cable.
It's totally doable and I, for one, would buy it.
>But one of creationists main arguments against evolution has always been that complex design implies an intelligent designer.
I would argue that any complex design requires an intelligent creator. A complex system (such as life), on the other hand, is apparently capable of spontaneously arising under nearly any circumstance where mass amounts of energy seek to become less ordered.
>The effectiveness of GAs simply disintegrates that argument.
Genetic algorithms are capable of producing apparently simple (yet stunningly clever) answers which can be conceptually thought of as a route through a (generally) complex solution space. In a nutshell, simplicity is mapped from complexity.
Although I am certainly NOT a creationist, a creationist would argue, as I do, that simple GAs are not capable of producing the complexty of nature that we see around us. So unfortunately the argument for GAs does little to help our cause.
...but to admit the possiblity that the big bang happened is to admit that God might not exist. It's more than just a theory to me, it's paradigm shifting without a clutch. Which is why I want *absolute proof* for me to even approach believing in the Big Bang....
I'm sorry but I don't understand.
Couldn't God, in his infinite wisdom, have instigated the big bang? If you answer yes, then what's you problem with believing it? If you say no, then aren't you implying that God is not all-powerful?
From this angle, it looks like your faith throws up no serious roadblocks between you and a belief in the big bang. I fail to see how moving the (conceptual) point where God started his work invalidates your belief system.
I like genetic programming. I like the whole concept of genetic algorithms (GA). However, I think you are stretching things a little when you say they can be used to prove macroevolution. The fact that GAs provide a different way of tackling problems does not imply that this is the same way that nature tackles problems. GAs can be 'scary' until you understand them. Once you realize that any 'odd' results coming from them are necessarilly encoded in the solution space which you've provided, they get a lot less spooky.
We computer people tend to be myopic. I used to think that GAs provided a good analogy to biological evolution processes, too, but I now believe that there is a heck of a lot more going on in nature than GAs - and more than can ever be accounted for by GAs alone. There are deeper biological layers of complexity and processes at work here.
You mean that if Kerry votes for one version of a bill and votes against another version of that bill he is not really a flip flopper?
Let's hand this one to Wiley: Best flip-flopper comic ever!
Use it to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen...of course storing massive quantities of hydrogen might be a little dangerous.
Splitting water and storing as a gas is not an efficient way of doing things.
Because hydrogen is such a small atom, when stored as a gas, hydrogen leaks out of almost any container at a significant rate (I seem to remember ~10% per day).
When bonded to metal and stored as a metal hydride, hydrogen is incredibly heavy, and this is not a very efficient means of storage.
When bonded to carbon, you get various fossil fuels. This is the most efficient way of storing massive quantities of hydrogen at the current time. And yes, it is dangerous.
My favorite little gem from this article:
"...In practical terms, that would spell the end of encryption as we know it. The Internet would be vulnerable to hackers and computer viruses... "
heh.
While we're OT, here's a little piece of fiction that I encountered on kuro5hin once, about what would happen if a large corporation were to locate an NP-oracle.
But if you use continuous flow, then the arteries gain one more similarity to veins, and so arteries may start suffering from the problems you mention, which normally only occur in veins.
I would think this to be unlikely, given that arteries are considerably more robust than veins. Arteries are reinforced as they have to carry a pressure load whereas veins, carrying relatively little pressure load, generally are not.
You had me fooled until you got to the metallic object and space pen.
A few years ago, my girlfriend at the time and I went for a walk in the arboreteum at my university. We climbed up onto the roof of one of the buildings, and lay back to watch the meteors.
The shower had just started, the girl had just de-topped, and we'd just started kissing when one of the Kampus Kops climbed the ladder and found us. He was cool - but he kicked us out of the arboreteum (after getting a good look at my girlfriend's rack, of course).
>>>Yes, I play this way. I put all my pawns on their row in random order
>>Um, that'd be the second row... unless you're counting from zero?
>It's a matter of perspective. I thought it was funny, because when I saw first row, I was thinking the same thing he was...
You guys are really splitting semantics here.
If you want to split them even more, realize that there is no such thing as "random order". (Randomness here precluding the notion of order, it would be more correct to say "in a random fashion" or "at random")
Gates: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Sony: UR NOT E (with 'E' colored red)
Remember, For Great Justice:
1) Include non-cumbersome controller at system launch
2) Try to keep gross weight of system under one (1) metric ton.
3) Internet connectivity is good. It should be a pack-in.
In Alberta those "large supplies of drinking water" come mainly from the melting glaciers in the Rocky Mountains. The glaciers are disapearing at such a rate that soon our river flows will only be a fraction of that in the past.
... those things ... that are going on ... out there. Good luck with them. Whatever they are.
Alberta? Are you guys still there? We out east don't give a flying f... OH WAIT, I mean we love the west! We really care about
(Kidding! Kidding! Just playing the eastern stereotype!) I have some friends who just moved out there there to lake louise, btw, and they're liking every minute of it. Well, actually they're not. They got suckered into one of those work-at-a-hotel-for-the-summer-and-get-paid-zilch jobs.
They do nothing but wash dishes.
For eight hours a night, from 10pm to 6am.
For minimum wage.
Six nights a week.
The province is beautiful, but they never get to see any of it. I guess they learned a lesson: look before you leap.