Rare earth magnets operate at room temperature just fine. The problem is that they are not statically stable. Any pitching beyond perfectly aligned will cause the device to quickly and violently flip over, requiring excessive force to subsequently remove it from the ground.
Disregarding the hoverboard feasibility issue for a moment, I wanted to point out that it is possible to force the magnetic flux of an array to be almost entirely on one side of the array: Halbach Array. Use the array's flux to induce an opposing field in loops of wire via induction.
Fun fact: Halbach Arrays are the reason many of those flat sheet refrigerator magnets only "stick" with one side and fall off if applied facing reverse.
So, now we have replaced the issue of prying the hoverboard free if it is flipped deck-side down by making it twice as difficult to free the hoverboard if it sticks to a light pole deck-side up. Progress! (haha)
They can then set a precedent for future cases by all authors.
I'm convinced that's exactly what they are trying to accomplish: they want to be the MAFIAA of written works, and seem determined to keep trying until they can bootstrap themselves into that position.
I would expect to spend less time waiting for statically compiled apps to load from disk, aggregated over my lifetime, than I have already had to spend in dependency hell trying to get two different binaries to play nicely. Not to mention less stress.
You make a good point, but I was exaggerating size requirements for effect: my statically compiled version of the svn binary was < 3 MB. I can think of no good reason why binaries like that shouldn't just be statically compiled. Besides, as the other poster pointed out, most MacOS X apps are statically compiled. I haven't seriously wished for faster app launch speeds when dealing with Macs compared to Windows, especially if I knew the tradeoff for ditching static compilation would be loss of "drag and drop" executability.
Granted, this isn't a panacea. I realize that all these different apps would need to be updated independently, but I consider this ramification to be conceptually consonant with my viewpoint (ideally using binary diff patches, of course).
As you pointed out, Mac OS does this "right" insofar as most apps are portable to another machine if you just copy the.app "file".
seriously, when was the last time you had a "dll hell" problem - while linux in particular lags behind.
Haha, Linux is exactly the reason I started seriously wishing for statically compiled binaries. When I compare, for example, getting a recent version of SVN onto a RHEL 4.x machine versus MacOS "drag to install"... well, the difference is stark. "No, I can't update lib-apr to your minimum version because that will break my PostgreSQL instance! Just give me a simple, standalone binary!" I eventually got a statically-compiled version of SVN for RHEL 4.x, scp'd it over, and it worked fine: statically compiled binaries for great "drag and drop" justice.
I'm not a zealot, so I believe people should have choice. I would love to be able to pick and choose whether I get a statically-compiled binary or the regular, linked-lib binary when installing from yum or apt-get. Of course, this would put a huge burden on repo maintainers, and I admit such an approach is likely unworkable.
But this is what the OS API, frameworks, and libraries are for.
Exactly. However, I would take it a step further and suggest that the overall idea to push this much application level functionality into OS libraries should be Considered Harmful.
"Don't write your own red eye correction code, it's built into the OS! Oh, wait, now I see that your new version only works correctly with version 1.5 of the library that's not in my current OS release. Guess I have to upgrade the *whole OS* to install your new software."
Yes, this happens in all OS's (cf. DirectX). However, increasing the surface of these kinds of dependencies to this degree seems like a bad plan.
I'm all for code reuse, but I would prefer it if most apps were statically compiled and included all their dependencies. I am also fine with having a few, very stable external dependencies; the.NET Framework is a good example because it is very basic and allows apps to explicitly target different framework levels (and the OS allows having multiple versions installed).
The alternative is DLL Hell (and/or weird gymnastics to try to avoid it) and all too often these dependency patches that get pushed out ("fixed once in dependency library, now fixed everywhere!") don't pan out as intended and break one app or another.
Statically compiled binaries would be "huge" but again, disk space is "free" in these amounts. As a user, do I really care if a particular app weighs in at 3 MB or 150 MB anymore? Naturally, a binary diff patch system like Chrome's would go a long way to mitigating the bandwidth required to keep these up to date.
Oh well. While I'm wishing, I want a moon rocket too.
I guess my realization was that this battle was over before it started due to the English translation of petitio principii being historically decided as "begging the question".
The typical connotation for transitive "beg" for common people is "to entreat/appeal/supplicate" or "require as necessary" the direct object of "beg". Consider a thought experiment: I'm sure you would agree that had this particular logical fallacy not appropriated the phrase then "begging the question" would logically parse as "prompts the question to be raised".
Therefore, I consider this scenario to be orthogonal to your valid example about the abuse of "awesome" supplanting the original denotation; I believe "begging the question" to have an inherent, valid and obvious parsing in the new, "abusive form" that has cropped up. This makes campaigning against the emergence of the new form almost untenable.
So, at best, I believe "begging the question" (fallacy) to be irrevocably cacked as a term due to the emergent ambiguity. This is much like how "megabyte" is now inherently ambiguous thanks to those IEC imperialists attempting to supplant the original definition. People can fight the good fight against the new definition, but the attempt at the promulgation of the new usurping definition has, ipso facto, ambiguated the term./muttering about those IEC bastards and their scorched earth tactics...
(also, it raises the question, not begs it. That means something else.)
You know, I used to be right there with you and corrected other people's misuse of the term. However, as time progressed I came around. It is much more intuitive (and frequently encountered) to use the improper form of this term. I still say, "begs me to ask" or "begs for the question" but they are unwieldy forms.
Besides, prima facie, the historical denotation of "begging the question" doesn't befit what is actually happening from a common person's perspective. "Question", in this context, is ambiguous for most people who aren't presuming the definition context of debate points. Furthermore, for those who truly beg the question to support an argument, asking questions/speaking tentatively is the furthest thing in their mind (ie. they are often full of zealous conviction).
Thus, I have begun to disambiguate and no longer use "begging the question" and say rather, "You are presuming the point under debate to support your argument", which is unambiguous and parses for everyone.
So, yes, you are correct. However, I think the effort to fight this is misplaced and righteous fury should be reserved for definitions that really matter. You know, like prefixes for data size being in powers of 2 rather than this subversive attempt to change the definition to refer to powers of 10. "MiB?! Over my dead body, you scum..."
(a) Collection of DNA samples
(1) From individuals in custody
(A) The Attorney General may, as prescribed by the Attorney General in regulation, collect DNA samples from individuals who are arrested, facing charges, or convicted or from non-United States persons who are detained under the authority of the United States. The Attorney General may delegate this function within the Department of Justice as provided in section 510 of title 28 and may also authorize and direct any other agency of the United States that arrests or detains individuals or supervises individuals facing charges to carry out any function and exercise any power of the Attorney General under this section.
Automatic expurgation of DNA data upon acquittal? Ha.
SHA and MD5 are hash algorithms, there's no way to recover the actual password from a hash.
Interestingly, this is not universally true: hash algorithms can be used for encryption in certain block cipher modes. This was explained to me by user Goaway in
this comment.
I concur that the submitter was completely off base referencing the use of hash algorithms in the context of stored passwords within a SQLite database. However, I believe the potential for nonstandard use of one-way hash functions for encryption to be quite interesting in a "thinking outside the box" sort of way.
I don't believe my post necessarily implies that I am a chemistry geek. I am just a computer engineer changing careers to medicine who has been forced to learn more chemistry than was ever desired.
I mean, Ray Kurzweil believes in "alkalinized water" and dismisses just adding sodium bicarbonate, because the HNO3- molecule won't work as well as the HO- molecule... which entirely disregards that HNO3- interacts with H2O to make H2NO3 and HO-. http://glowing-health.com/alkaline-water/ray-kurzweil-alkaine-water.html
Sodium bicarbonate (aka baking soda) has a molecular formula of NaHCO3. There is no nitrogen in it, and it seems you merely need to s/N/C in your quote. Somewhat ironically given your particular typo, HNO3 is nitric acid, which is a very strong acid (pKa =~ -1.4, which implies that it will completely dissociate in water) and is most certainly not alkaline. Furthermore, note that HNO3 would have no charge as written, and NO3- (nitrate) would have a - charge for the polyatomic ion. However, your typo and the subject molecules are interesting from a biochemistry perspective.
Bicarbonate (HCO3-) is a weak acid/base and is amphiprotic and amphoteric. Many biological organisms, humans included, use bicarbonate as a buffer molecule to maintain blood pH within the very narrow pH band required for the organism's survival.
The rule of thumb for buffer solutions is that they are most effective within pH +/- 1 of the pKa of the relevant moiety. Of course, in biological systems, the buffer isn't "static" and the organism expends energy to maintain homeostasis. Here's an example of the blood pH bicarbonate buffer using the Hendersen-Hasselbach equation. You can see the blood pH (7.4) is outside the +/- 1 pH of the pKa of bicarbonate (~6.1), and therefore the dissociation ratio is 20:1. Obviously, this buffer solution wouldn't work well if the organism didn't constantly rebalance it.
Your body uses the lungs to maintain the buffer, and this is why your blood can become more alkaline if you hyperventilate (respiratory alkalosis).
Also, I realized full well that the comment I was replying to only referenced Win7/Ubuntu, but I glossed over that because its trivial to disable swap for Windows/Linux and they lack the egregious side effects of OOM/memory pressure that MacOS X 10.6 64-bit (at least) has if swap is disabled.
Not trying to troll, but if you have tons of memory and are pained by Firefox's/MacOS' insane paging-for-no-reason like I was, then why not disable swap?
That's what I did. It made my Mac responsive again while using Firefox. I found the frequent 20+ second freezes while paging in to be infuriating, given that the machine has 6 GB physical.
No freezes anymore, but MacOS is not designed to run without swap and Fails Badly if you run out of memory. You have to "pull the plug" (ACPI initiated poweroff) because not even the mouse will respond.
PS. nothing beats the pain of using the New Slashdot in an Android browser. Ugh. I apologize in advance for any errors caused by the site fighting to control my cursor and have it jump around for the lulz while I type this.
Heh. Well, I thought my posted response was more measured than my initial "WTF?" response based on the apparent lack of understanding of the natural ballistic arc of the bullet's trajectory. Attempting to force a bullet to fly a straight line via some MEMS-based airfoil (even if it were feasible) would rob the bullet of kinetic energy by slowing it down. Bullets' efficacy is directly proportional to the kinetic energy deposited into the target (and the correct amount of penetration [not over or under]), so this would be a deleterious effect.
Power is clearly required for actuators
What is your proposed power source? Whatever it is must be highly stable (being able to last for years in storage without degrading) and must also be highly reliable after that that time in extreme conditions of pressure, temperature, and acceleration (naturally, we can ignore terminal deceleration, heh). The entire cartridge system must be very tolerant of the rigors and abuse that would be encountered in combat (shock, dirt/sand/dust, moisture, etc).
I thought that would be obvious enough.
I didn't assume anything after I read "light speed limitation becomes non-trivial at the time frames considered", when it clearly is a non-issue.
As for remote guidance, what is important is the time difference between two consecutive corrections, which is longer than 333ns since we have to account for processing & sensing latency at either end.
Sure, but that's not what you said. Had you said something about that kind of latency it would have been more plausible. Furthermore, let's agree that the ~0.1 second flight time of the bullet to 100m is a relative eternity when it comes to simple signal communication and processing. I was much more concerned about the ability of the proposed MEMS deformations/relaxations to be able to effect the desired outcome given the >300 KHz rate required for the rifled bullet (and the power demands thereof), even if the materials science were available for this.
Please note that gyroscopic stabilization does not require that the *entire* projectile rotate as a unit.
That is correct, but are you familiar with how a rifle barrel works to impart the gyroscopic stabilization of the bullet? If you are suggesting eliminating the gyroscopic stabilization, your proposed projectile will have more trouble maintaining course with crosswinds and will suffer in its terminal ballistic performance (eg. tumbling/fragmentation).
All the stuff you are proposing to pack into the bullet is changing its composition. Center of mass is important, because rifle bullets already tend to flip and fly "end first" after they traverse longer distances (overturning moment [cool site, btw]). This is Bad and renders the bullet significantly less effective. Note that this effect would be significantly worse in the absence of spin stabilization and in that case the bullet would tend to tumble right after it emerged from the (smooth bore) barrel, again seriously diminishing its efficacy.
Again, cool idea, but I doubt it would work beyond serving as a plot element in a Stargate fanfic or something. Cheers!
PS. Fun, if unrelated fact: the M1 Abrams tank 120 mm main gun is smooth bore. Stabilization is imparted to APFSDS rounds via passive fins on the kinetic penetrator dart. The aerodynamics of an arrow-like dart (and the use cases for APFSDS rounds) is, of course, completely different than any kind of regular bullet.
One I use for important recurring services and the other I use for every-day purchases and on-line commerce. That way if a fraudulent charge occurs on the second card I can just close it out without having to call people up on the phone to move the recurring charges (which is a hassle).
Always a good plan. However, may I suggest a layer of indirection? Controlled Payment Numbers, such as Bank of America's ShopSafe, provide a way to generate "throwaway" credit card numbers linked to your primary cc account on their backend (much like a pointer). As a bonus, they have a user-selectable fixed credit limit (or fixed monthly recurring limit), and each one can only be used for additional charges at the original merchant that charged that number.
The biggest win was when my primary cc account was changed due to a massive data breach at an "undisclosed third party". I had setup all my recurring charges to use individual ShopSafe numbers. They updated the "pointers" on the backend and even though I got a new cc number, all the recurring charges to the ShopSafe numbers kept going through without a hitch. No hassle.
I laugh at the specter of data breaches and attempted fraud. Have fun charging that stolen card number given that it was already exhausted because I set the spending limit == my transaction's value, and wouldn't work if you attempted to use it anywhere else but the original merchant anyway. This prevents sneaky merchant upcharges, too.
The best way to build a guided bullet, methinks, is to build an unpowered projectile with with microscopic steering surfaces on the exterior
Excuse me, but what are you talking about? It's unpowered... but has the power to move steering surfaces? Also, what would these surfaces look like if they aren't fins?
with a very simple built in circuit that does nothing more than correcting to stay inside a laser guidance beam that's painting the target.
Have you taken physics? Bullets follow a ballistic trajectory. If you are suggesting that the unpowered bullet somehow selectively deform its exterior so it forms an airfoil of one type or another, please recall that any active point on the exterior will have to have to deform/relax at 311 KHz in order to create a stable form as presented to the fixed frame of reference. Also note that this approach would likely defeat the whole point of rifling in the first place, which is gyroscopic stabilization. Said stabilization is also going to fight against any steering attempts (cf. angular momentum).
(because light speed limitation becomes non-trivial at the time frames considered)
Uh, okay... no, that's not a concern. Let's say the bullet is aimed at a target 100 m away. That's 333 nanoseconds away by light speed. Ignoring the fact that bullets slow down from drag, even at the terminal distance, there is time for 303,150 messages to be sent. The larger problem would be processing & reacting to this in your unpowered bullet, not to mention the materials science.
While designing all these modifications to the bullet's interior and exterior, don't forget that the round has to have adequate penetrating power and terminal ballistics. If it's an antimateriel round, then it needs to have a large, dense, pointed solid mass coaxially located in the center of the bullet. If it's antipersonnel, then it can & should fragment upon tumbling and create an adequately-sized wound channel (as measured via both temporary and permanent characteristics). In either case, the round should have adequate penetrating power so that it doesn't disintegrate upon striking something like auto glass. So, whatever you pack into the round can't deleteriously affect these characteristics or the whole exercise becomes pointless.
Perhaps we can make the bullet slower -- provided we can correct for gravity, we can sacrifice speed in favor of accuracy.
I am surprised that no one else commented about the extreme rotational forces involved in rifle bullets.
Take, for example, the M855 ball round used in most US M4's. It has a muzzle velocity of 3025 feet per second. A standard M4 barrel has a 1 in 7 inch twist, meaning the bullet completes a full rotation every 7 inches. Simple stoichiometry follows: 3025 feet/sec * 60 sec/min * 12 inches/1 foot * 1 rotation/7 inches = 311,142 rpm.
Remember those old videos of CD's exploding when they are rotated too fast, even when they are wrapped with wires to increase their tensile strength? Same applies here. As a matter of fact, this is used as a design feature: ball ammunition is designed to "tumble" end over end when it hits flesh which pushes the centrifugal forces on the bullet over the tensile strength of the bullet's jacket. This causes the bullet to fragment into tiny particles in the flesh, which results in the full force of the kinetic energy being deposited into the target.
Anyway, while the MEMS approach might be feasible from a size perspective, imagine the forces operating on one of these fins and the energy required to move any given fin even a tiny amount when it is feeling the pressures involved while moving through a fluid at 311 krpm. Now imagine what kind of materials would be necessary to implement this without the fin deforming or the armature of the fin simply shearing off.
These are cool ideas, but I think the physics & materials science aren't there.
If he has both sense and intelligence, he writes a stock performance predictor, uses it himself, and then uses a drill to expunge the knowledge from his brain.
So you have no issues with people taking abandoned GPL projects and relicensing them as they see fit?
If the abandoned works had their copyright abrogated then those works would enter public domain. They couldn't be "relicensed" at that point, but you are correct that derivative works could be made with alternative licenses to the original GPL that was attached to the work.
However, I don't believe that would be a catastrophic situation. It is not as though the source would be lost—as a matter of fact it would still be Free. No matter whether you are in the BSD or GPL license advocacy camp, everyone will agree that the public domain is very Free. Someone wishing to pick up where the "abandoned to public domain" project left off could license their derivative work as GPL and the growing project would rapidly become effectively GPL'd (until abandoned again, or copyright was otherwise terminated). If someone made a derivative work with a license that displeased you, you would also be free to make your own GPL'd derivative competitive fork from the original, public domain code.
There will never be a perfect solution that pleases everyone. However, the original intent of copyright was to encourage the creation and sharing of works that would eventually be public domain so that everyone would benefit. It's so bad right now that there is a pending US Supreme Court case where the government is arguing that it has the power to yank stuff back out of the public domain and restore copyright to it.
From the NYT (sorry) article: "If Congress tomorrow wants to give a copyright to a publisher solely for the purpose of publishing and disseminating Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, it can do it?" Justice Stephen G. Breyer asked a lawyer for the government.
"It may," said the lawyer, Theodore B. Olson, who was United States solicitor general at the time.
If not, why do you think it's okay to strip the authors of these books of their copyright?
The current copyright regime has effectively killed the public domain, and the public domain must be restored. Personally, I am willing to surrender some of the IP protection currently provided to my own work in favor of forming a more robust public domain.
How does some guild get authority to represent all authors of out of print fiction?
Well, according to TFB (blurb), that's essentially the judge's rationale for rejecting the deal.
I am torn: on one hand, I believe that copyright law no longer "promotes the progress of Science and useful Arts", so I would like to see Google have the ability to make a sweeping digital library of abandonware books (seriously, if the authors aren't selling the book, how are they harmed?)
However, if this deal went through, it seems likely that it would have been the birth of another MAFIAA-style intellectual property racket.
So, perhaps we are considering the situation from an artificially constrained viewpoint. The pragmatic approach to getting the digital library would have been to take the deal with this newborn devil, but we would have to live with those consequences. The idealistic approach would be to "fix" copyright law so that such a library could be created... you know, the better to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
Does anyone else want some of what I am apparently smoking to cause me to have such fantastic & vague ideas (haha)? Maybe I got hit on the head or something.
...and why should we have the Geneva conventions when the other side doesn't.
I perceive the argument you are attempting to make; however, there is a slight point of order here—the Geneva Conventions don't apply if the other side isn't a signatory, unless the other side abides by the Conventions anyway.
Quoth Wikipedia (with actual citation for the fact, amazing!) on the Geneva Conventions article:
The Conventions apply to a signatory nation even if the opposing nation is not a signatory, but only if the opposing nation "accepts and applies the provisions" of the Conventions. (emphasis mine)
If you think about it, this is the only way a cognitively dissonant concept like "laws of war" could even be remotely workable. If "side 1" is violating surrender protocol by detonating suicide bombs strapped to their soldiers, then it really isn't tenable to force "side 2" to grant quarter. So, as nasty as it sounds, if "side 1" is sending children strapped with bombs at "side 2", then it's perfectly reasonable to expect "side 2" to shoot children who match the profile of suicide bombers.
As I said before, the very concept of "laws" in war is highly cognitively dissonant. To wit: "Okay, so, we are going to go our separate ways and then attempt to kill each other in order to force the other side to bend to our will. Oh, but killing strategies x, y, and z aren't cool and are criminal. So, to recap: we agree it's time for mass killing, devious tricks, and depredation of each others' territories, but these certain listed things are offensive!"
Or, given that terrorists seem to have access to suicide bombers, simply smash through the front gate in a truck loaded with a fertilizer bomb. It's not like a wire fence can stop it.
Yeah, but high speed deployment bollards could. These have been under development for a while. I don't remember the original article I read about the tech, but I found these in 10 seconds on google (and I doubt they are the only manufacturer):
Rapid-response barriers fully deploy in 6 seconds in normal operation mode and in less than 2 seconds in optional emergency operation mode
Put in a fast deployment severe tire damage initial border. That will shred the tires. Follow that with another border 175 meters further in enforced by these rapid deployment bollards (should be adequate to handle a bomb-carrying bomb moving at 250 kph/155 mph). Tie this into an automated radar system for deployment if someone crashes the gate.
Put in a 10 meter deep dry moat around the facility and on either side of the access road.
And if publishers lose, we all lose, because quite honestly ebooks are a far inferior experience to real, dead tree books.
You are conflating the issues. Publishers don't really provide much value anymore, and they engage in protectionist gatekeeping crap that squelches smaller authors or those who don't wish to "play ball". There are many analogues in other businesses. Take, for example, Ticketmaster... how the hell can they call it a "convenience fee" if I am buying the ticket at the venue's box office? But I digress...
I believe technology will also come to the rescue wrt your dead tree book concerns: Print on demand
As this technology evolves, there will be almost no overhead that the B&M's currently face, due to zero inventory. Just as digital photography hasn't killed the glossy print, I don't believe the popularity of e-books will kill the dead-tree market. Hell, a few years back Apple integrated into iPhoto a way to get your digital photos delivered as a printed book. The future could even be brighter than the present: what if you could inexpensively custom order your books to have leather binding, be a particular color, be in your favorite 'easy to read' font, etc? These value-adds would be fairly inexpensive to produce in a PoD scenario. Furthermore, "out of print" would become an obsolete concept: no more searching high and low, then paying an exorbitant price all for a thumbworn used book.
BTW, I have nothing against publishers if they evolve and actually provide value commensurate to their cost. Editing, "packaging" the book with cover art, marketing, etc, could all contribute value. However, "you have to use us or we will keep you from being able to sell your book because we have locked up the distribution channels" is the antithesis of value.
It would be better to catch herpes instead of leprosy, but personally I'll stay away from both.
I agree with your overall point. However, I disagree with your first assertion. Leprosy (Hansen's Disease) is caused by bacteria and is curable with antibiotics. Herpes, well... you get to take Valtrex for the rest of your life and hope it "reduces the risk" of transmission and "manages" your outbreak frequency. I assess "least worst" as a curable disease (presuming it is diagnosed before major damage is done).
Slashdot Mirror
Rare earth magnets operate at room temperature just fine. The problem is that they are not statically stable. Any pitching beyond perfectly aligned will cause the device to quickly and violently flip over, requiring excessive force to subsequently remove it from the ground.
Disregarding the hoverboard feasibility issue for a moment, I wanted to point out that it is possible to force the magnetic flux of an array to be almost entirely on one side of the array: Halbach Array. Use the array's flux to induce an opposing field in loops of wire via induction.
Fun fact: Halbach Arrays are the reason many of those flat sheet refrigerator magnets only "stick" with one side and fall off if applied facing reverse.
So, now we have replaced the issue of prying the hoverboard free if it is flipped deck-side down by making it twice as difficult to free the hoverboard if it sticks to a light pole deck-side up. Progress! (haha)
They can then set a precedent for future cases by all authors.
I'm convinced that's exactly what they are trying to accomplish: they want to be the MAFIAA of written works, and seem determined to keep trying until they can bootstrap themselves into that position.
It's like watching The Omen , only real.
I would expect to spend less time waiting for statically compiled apps to load from disk, aggregated over my lifetime, than I have already had to spend in dependency hell trying to get two different binaries to play nicely. Not to mention less stress.
You make a good point, but I was exaggerating size requirements for effect: my statically compiled version of the svn binary was < 3 MB. I can think of no good reason why binaries like that shouldn't just be statically compiled. Besides, as the other poster pointed out, most MacOS X apps are statically compiled. I haven't seriously wished for faster app launch speeds when dealing with Macs compared to Windows, especially if I knew the tradeoff for ditching static compilation would be loss of "drag and drop" executability.
It has its upsides, but also its problems
Granted, this isn't a panacea. I realize that all these different apps would need to be updated independently, but I consider this ramification to be conceptually consonant with my viewpoint (ideally using binary diff patches, of course).
.app "file".
As you pointed out, Mac OS does this "right" insofar as most apps are portable to another machine if you just copy the
seriously, when was the last time you had a "dll hell" problem - while linux in particular lags behind.
Haha, Linux is exactly the reason I started seriously wishing for statically compiled binaries. When I compare, for example, getting a recent version of SVN onto a RHEL 4.x machine versus MacOS "drag to install"... well, the difference is stark. "No, I can't update lib-apr to your minimum version because that will break my PostgreSQL instance! Just give me a simple, standalone binary!" I eventually got a statically-compiled version of SVN for RHEL 4.x, scp'd it over, and it worked fine: statically compiled binaries for great "drag and drop" justice.
I'm not a zealot, so I believe people should have choice. I would love to be able to pick and choose whether I get a statically-compiled binary or the regular, linked-lib binary when installing from yum or apt-get. Of course, this would put a huge burden on repo maintainers, and I admit such an approach is likely unworkable.
But this is what the OS API, frameworks, and libraries are for.
Exactly. However, I would take it a step further and suggest that the overall idea to push this much application level functionality into OS libraries should be Considered Harmful.
.NET Framework is a good example because it is very basic and allows apps to explicitly target different framework levels (and the OS allows having multiple versions installed).
"Don't write your own red eye correction code, it's built into the OS! Oh, wait, now I see that your new version only works correctly with version 1.5 of the library that's not in my current OS release. Guess I have to upgrade the *whole OS* to install your new software."
Yes, this happens in all OS's (cf. DirectX). However, increasing the surface of these kinds of dependencies to this degree seems like a bad plan.
I'm all for code reuse, but I would prefer it if most apps were statically compiled and included all their dependencies. I am also fine with having a few, very stable external dependencies; the
The alternative is DLL Hell (and/or weird gymnastics to try to avoid it) and all too often these dependency patches that get pushed out ("fixed once in dependency library, now fixed everywhere!") don't pan out as intended and break one app or another.
Statically compiled binaries would be "huge" but again, disk space is "free" in these amounts. As a user, do I really care if a particular app weighs in at 3 MB or 150 MB anymore? Naturally, a binary diff patch system like Chrome's would go a long way to mitigating the bandwidth required to keep these up to date.
Oh well. While I'm wishing, I want a moon rocket too.
I guess my realization was that this battle was over before it started due to the English translation of petitio principii being historically decided as "begging the question".
/muttering about those IEC bastards and their scorched earth tactics...
The typical connotation for transitive "beg" for common people is "to entreat/appeal/supplicate" or "require as necessary" the direct object of "beg". Consider a thought experiment: I'm sure you would agree that had this particular logical fallacy not appropriated the phrase then "begging the question" would logically parse as "prompts the question to be raised".
Therefore, I consider this scenario to be orthogonal to your valid example about the abuse of "awesome" supplanting the original denotation; I believe "begging the question" to have an inherent, valid and obvious parsing in the new, "abusive form" that has cropped up. This makes campaigning against the emergence of the new form almost untenable.
So, at best, I believe "begging the question" (fallacy) to be irrevocably cacked as a term due to the emergent ambiguity. This is much like how "megabyte" is now inherently ambiguous thanks to those IEC imperialists attempting to supplant the original definition. People can fight the good fight against the new definition, but the attempt at the promulgation of the new usurping definition has, ipso facto, ambiguated the term.
PS. How's "ambiguate" as a neologism? Haha
(also, it raises the question, not begs it. That means something else.)
You know, I used to be right there with you and corrected other people's misuse of the term. However, as time progressed I came around. It is much more intuitive (and frequently encountered) to use the improper form of this term. I still say, "begs me to ask" or "begs for the question" but they are unwieldy forms.
Besides, prima facie, the historical denotation of "begging the question" doesn't befit what is actually happening from a common person's perspective. "Question", in this context, is ambiguous for most people who aren't presuming the definition context of debate points. Furthermore, for those who truly beg the question to support an argument, asking questions/speaking tentatively is the furthest thing in their mind (ie. they are often full of zealous conviction).
Thus, I have begun to disambiguate and no longer use "begging the question" and say rather, "You are presuming the point under debate to support your argument", which is unambiguous and parses for everyone.
So, yes, you are correct. However, I think the effort to fight this is misplaced and righteous fury should be reserved for definitions that really matter. You know, like prefixes for data size being in powers of 2 rather than this subversive attempt to change the definition to refer to powers of 10. "MiB?! Over my dead body, you scum..."
Excerpt:
Automatic expurgation of DNA data upon acquittal? Ha.
SHA and MD5 are hash algorithms, there's no way to recover the actual password from a hash.
Interestingly, this is not universally true: hash algorithms can be used for encryption in certain block cipher modes. This was explained to me by user Goaway in this comment.
I concur that the submitter was completely off base referencing the use of hash algorithms in the context of stored passwords within a SQLite database. However, I believe the potential for nonstandard use of one-way hash functions for encryption to be quite interesting in a "thinking outside the box" sort of way.
I don't believe my post necessarily implies that I am a chemistry geek. I am just a computer engineer changing careers to medicine who has been forced to learn more chemistry than was ever desired.
Some of it is interesting...
I mean, Ray Kurzweil believes in "alkalinized water" and dismisses just adding sodium bicarbonate, because the HNO3- molecule won't work as well as the HO- molecule... which entirely disregards that HNO3- interacts with H2O to make H2NO3 and HO-. http://glowing-health.com/alkaline-water/ray-kurzweil-alkaine-water.html
Sodium bicarbonate (aka baking soda) has a molecular formula of NaHCO3. There is no nitrogen in it, and it seems you merely need to s/N/C in your quote. Somewhat ironically given your particular typo, HNO3 is nitric acid, which is a very strong acid (pKa =~ -1.4, which implies that it will completely dissociate in water) and is most certainly not alkaline. Furthermore, note that HNO3 would have no charge as written, and NO3- (nitrate) would have a - charge for the polyatomic ion. However, your typo and the subject molecules are interesting from a biochemistry perspective.
Bicarbonate (HCO3-) is a weak acid/base and is amphiprotic and amphoteric. Many biological organisms, humans included, use bicarbonate as a buffer molecule to maintain blood pH within the very narrow pH band required for the organism's survival.
The rule of thumb for buffer solutions is that they are most effective within pH +/- 1 of the pKa of the relevant moiety. Of course, in biological systems, the buffer isn't "static" and the organism expends energy to maintain homeostasis. Here's an example of the blood pH bicarbonate buffer using the Hendersen-Hasselbach equation. You can see the blood pH (7.4) is outside the +/- 1 pH of the pKa of bicarbonate (~6.1), and therefore the dissociation ratio is 20:1. Obviously, this buffer solution wouldn't work well if the organism didn't constantly rebalance it.
Your body uses the lungs to maintain the buffer, and this is why your blood can become more alkaline if you hyperventilate (respiratory alkalosis).
Haha, how's that for an off-topic tangent?
Also, I realized full well that the comment I was replying to only referenced Win7/Ubuntu, but I glossed over that because its trivial to disable swap for Windows/Linux and they lack the egregious side effects of OOM/memory pressure that MacOS X 10.6 64-bit (at least) has if swap is disabled.
Not trying to troll, but if you have tons of memory and are pained by Firefox's/MacOS' insane paging-for-no-reason like I was, then why not disable swap?
That's what I did. It made my Mac responsive again while using Firefox. I found the frequent 20+ second freezes while paging in to be infuriating, given that the machine has 6 GB physical.
No freezes anymore, but MacOS is not designed to run without swap and Fails Badly if you run out of memory. You have to "pull the plug" (ACPI initiated poweroff) because not even the mouse will respond.
PS. nothing beats the pain of using the New Slashdot in an Android browser. Ugh. I apologize in advance for any errors caused by the site fighting to control my cursor and have it jump around for the lulz while I type this.
There is no need to become argumentative.
Heh. Well, I thought my posted response was more measured than my initial "WTF?" response based on the apparent lack of understanding of the natural ballistic arc of the bullet's trajectory. Attempting to force a bullet to fly a straight line via some MEMS-based airfoil (even if it were feasible) would rob the bullet of kinetic energy by slowing it down. Bullets' efficacy is directly proportional to the kinetic energy deposited into the target (and the correct amount of penetration [not over or under]), so this would be a deleterious effect.
Power is clearly required for actuators
What is your proposed power source? Whatever it is must be highly stable (being able to last for years in storage without degrading) and must also be highly reliable after that that time in extreme conditions of pressure, temperature, and acceleration (naturally, we can ignore terminal deceleration, heh). The entire cartridge system must be very tolerant of the rigors and abuse that would be encountered in combat (shock, dirt/sand/dust, moisture, etc).
I thought that would be obvious enough.
I didn't assume anything after I read "light speed limitation becomes non-trivial at the time frames considered", when it clearly is a non-issue.
As for remote guidance, what is important is the time difference between two consecutive corrections, which is longer than 333ns since we have to account for processing & sensing latency at either end.
Sure, but that's not what you said. Had you said something about that kind of latency it would have been more plausible. Furthermore, let's agree that the ~0.1 second flight time of the bullet to 100m is a relative eternity when it comes to simple signal communication and processing. I was much more concerned about the ability of the proposed MEMS deformations/relaxations to be able to effect the desired outcome given the >300 KHz rate required for the rifled bullet (and the power demands thereof), even if the materials science were available for this.
Please note that gyroscopic stabilization does not require that the *entire* projectile rotate as a unit.
That is correct, but are you familiar with how a rifle barrel works to impart the gyroscopic stabilization of the bullet? If you are suggesting eliminating the gyroscopic stabilization, your proposed projectile will have more trouble maintaining course with crosswinds and will suffer in its terminal ballistic performance (eg. tumbling/fragmentation).
All the stuff you are proposing to pack into the bullet is changing its composition. Center of mass is important, because rifle bullets already tend to flip and fly "end first" after they traverse longer distances (overturning moment [cool site, btw]). This is Bad and renders the bullet significantly less effective. Note that this effect would be significantly worse in the absence of spin stabilization and in that case the bullet would tend to tumble right after it emerged from the (smooth bore) barrel, again seriously diminishing its efficacy.
Again, cool idea, but I doubt it would work beyond serving as a plot element in a Stargate fanfic or something. Cheers!
PS. Fun, if unrelated fact: the M1 Abrams tank 120 mm main gun is smooth bore. Stabilization is imparted to APFSDS rounds via passive fins on the kinetic penetrator dart. The aerodynamics of an arrow-like dart (and the use cases for APFSDS rounds) is, of course, completely different than any kind of regular bullet.
One I use for important recurring services and the other I use for every-day purchases and on-line commerce. That way if a fraudulent charge occurs on the second card I can just close it out without having to call people up on the phone to move the recurring charges (which is a hassle).
Always a good plan. However, may I suggest a layer of indirection? Controlled Payment Numbers, such as Bank of America's ShopSafe, provide a way to generate "throwaway" credit card numbers linked to your primary cc account on their backend (much like a pointer). As a bonus, they have a user-selectable fixed credit limit (or fixed monthly recurring limit), and each one can only be used for additional charges at the original merchant that charged that number.
The biggest win was when my primary cc account was changed due to a massive data breach at an "undisclosed third party". I had setup all my recurring charges to use individual ShopSafe numbers. They updated the "pointers" on the backend and even though I got a new cc number, all the recurring charges to the ShopSafe numbers kept going through without a hitch. No hassle.
I laugh at the specter of data breaches and attempted fraud. Have fun charging that stolen card number given that it was already exhausted because I set the spending limit == my transaction's value, and wouldn't work if you attempted to use it anywhere else but the original merchant anyway. This prevents sneaky merchant upcharges, too.
The best way to build a guided bullet, methinks, is to build an unpowered projectile with with microscopic steering surfaces on the exterior
Excuse me, but what are you talking about? It's unpowered... but has the power to move steering surfaces? Also, what would these surfaces look like if they aren't fins?
with a very simple built in circuit that does nothing more than correcting to stay inside a laser guidance beam that's painting the target.
Have you taken physics? Bullets follow a ballistic trajectory. If you are suggesting that the unpowered bullet somehow selectively deform its exterior so it forms an airfoil of one type or another, please recall that any active point on the exterior will have to have to deform/relax at 311 KHz in order to create a stable form as presented to the fixed frame of reference. Also note that this approach would likely defeat the whole point of rifling in the first place, which is gyroscopic stabilization. Said stabilization is also going to fight against any steering attempts (cf. angular momentum).
(because light speed limitation becomes non-trivial at the time frames considered)
Uh, okay... no, that's not a concern. Let's say the bullet is aimed at a target 100 m away. That's 333 nanoseconds away by light speed. Ignoring the fact that bullets slow down from drag, even at the terminal distance, there is time for 303,150 messages to be sent. The larger problem would be processing & reacting to this in your unpowered bullet, not to mention the materials science.
While designing all these modifications to the bullet's interior and exterior, don't forget that the round has to have adequate penetrating power and terminal ballistics. If it's an antimateriel round, then it needs to have a large, dense, pointed solid mass coaxially located in the center of the bullet. If it's antipersonnel, then it can & should fragment upon tumbling and create an adequately-sized wound channel (as measured via both temporary and permanent characteristics). In either case, the round should have adequate penetrating power so that it doesn't disintegrate upon striking something like auto glass. So, whatever you pack into the round can't deleteriously affect these characteristics or the whole exercise becomes pointless.
Perhaps we can make the bullet slower -- provided we can correct for gravity, we can sacrifice speed in favor of accuracy.
That's already been taken to its logic & feasible conclusion.
In summary, I think the whole idea is untenable. That was the point of my post above.
I am surprised that no one else commented about the extreme rotational forces involved in rifle bullets.
Take, for example, the M855 ball round used in most US M4's. It has a muzzle velocity of 3025 feet per second. A standard M4 barrel has a 1 in 7 inch twist, meaning the bullet completes a full rotation every 7 inches. Simple stoichiometry follows: 3025 feet/sec * 60 sec/min * 12 inches/1 foot * 1 rotation/7 inches = 311,142 rpm.
Remember those old videos of CD's exploding when they are rotated too fast, even when they are wrapped with wires to increase their tensile strength? Same applies here. As a matter of fact, this is used as a design feature: ball ammunition is designed to "tumble" end over end when it hits flesh which pushes the centrifugal forces on the bullet over the tensile strength of the bullet's jacket. This causes the bullet to fragment into tiny particles in the flesh, which results in the full force of the kinetic energy being deposited into the target.
Anyway, while the MEMS approach might be feasible from a size perspective, imagine the forces operating on one of these fins and the energy required to move any given fin even a tiny amount when it is feeling the pressures involved while moving through a fluid at 311 krpm. Now imagine what kind of materials would be necessary to implement this without the fin deforming or the armature of the fin simply shearing off.
These are cool ideas, but I think the physics & materials science aren't there.
Unless you're proposing to make Autistic children the "Queens" of our hive, and relegate everyone else to supporting them and their broods...
I am cognizant of the tongue in cheek nature of your remark, but strangely, eusocial mammals are not without precedent.
Very bizarre. I had always considered eusociality to be the exclusive domain of the insects...
If he has both sense and intelligence, he writes a stock performance predictor, uses it himself, and then uses a drill to expunge the knowledge from his brain.
FTFY.
Haha, what a great film...
So you have no issues with people taking abandoned GPL projects and relicensing them as they see fit?
If the abandoned works had their copyright abrogated then those works would enter public domain. They couldn't be "relicensed" at that point, but you are correct that derivative works could be made with alternative licenses to the original GPL that was attached to the work.
However, I don't believe that would be a catastrophic situation. It is not as though the source would be lost—as a matter of fact it would still be Free. No matter whether you are in the BSD or GPL license advocacy camp, everyone will agree that the public domain is very Free. Someone wishing to pick up where the "abandoned to public domain" project left off could license their derivative work as GPL and the growing project would rapidly become effectively GPL'd (until abandoned again, or copyright was otherwise terminated). If someone made a derivative work with a license that displeased you, you would also be free to make your own GPL'd derivative competitive fork from the original, public domain code.
There will never be a perfect solution that pleases everyone. However, the original intent of copyright was to encourage the creation and sharing of works that would eventually be public domain so that everyone would benefit. It's so bad right now that there is a pending US Supreme Court case where the government is arguing that it has the power to yank stuff back out of the public domain and restore copyright to it.
From the NYT (sorry) article:
"If Congress tomorrow wants to give a copyright to a publisher solely for the purpose of publishing and disseminating Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, it can do it?" Justice Stephen G. Breyer asked a lawyer for the government.
"It may," said the lawyer, Theodore B. Olson, who was United States solicitor general at the time.
If not, why do you think it's okay to strip the authors of these books of their copyright?
The current copyright regime has effectively killed the public domain, and the public domain must be restored. Personally, I am willing to surrender some of the IP protection currently provided to my own work in favor of forming a more robust public domain.
How does some guild get authority to represent all authors of out of print fiction?
Well, according to TFB (blurb), that's essentially the judge's rationale for rejecting the deal.
I am torn: on one hand, I believe that copyright law no longer "promotes the progress of Science and useful Arts", so I would like to see Google have the ability to make a sweeping digital library of abandonware books (seriously, if the authors aren't selling the book, how are they harmed?)
However, if this deal went through, it seems likely that it would have been the birth of another MAFIAA-style intellectual property racket.
So, perhaps we are considering the situation from an artificially constrained viewpoint. The pragmatic approach to getting the digital library would have been to take the deal with this newborn devil, but we would have to live with those consequences. The idealistic approach would be to "fix" copyright law so that such a library could be created... you know, the better to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
Does anyone else want some of what I am apparently smoking to cause me to have such fantastic & vague ideas (haha)? Maybe I got hit on the head or something.
...and why should we have the Geneva conventions when the other side doesn't.
I perceive the argument you are attempting to make; however, there is a slight point of order here—the Geneva Conventions don't apply if the other side isn't a signatory, unless the other side abides by the Conventions anyway.
Quoth Wikipedia (with actual citation for the fact, amazing!) on the Geneva Conventions article:
The Conventions apply to a signatory nation even if the opposing nation is not a signatory, but only if the opposing nation "accepts and applies the provisions" of the Conventions. (emphasis mine)
If you think about it, this is the only way a cognitively dissonant concept like "laws of war" could even be remotely workable. If "side 1" is violating surrender protocol by detonating suicide bombs strapped to their soldiers, then it really isn't tenable to force "side 2" to grant quarter. So, as nasty as it sounds, if "side 1" is sending children strapped with bombs at "side 2", then it's perfectly reasonable to expect "side 2" to shoot children who match the profile of suicide bombers.
As I said before, the very concept of "laws" in war is highly cognitively dissonant. To wit: "Okay, so, we are going to go our separate ways and then attempt to kill each other in order to force the other side to bend to our will. Oh, but killing strategies x, y, and z aren't cool and are criminal. So, to recap: we agree it's time for mass killing, devious tricks, and depredation of each others' territories, but these certain listed things are offensive!"
Or, given that terrorists seem to have access to suicide bombers, simply smash through the front gate in a truck loaded with a fertilizer bomb. It's not like a wire fence can stop it.
Yeah, but high speed deployment bollards could. These have been under development for a while. I don't remember the original article I read about the tech, but I found these in 10 seconds on google (and I doubt they are the only manufacturer):
Rapid-response barriers fully deploy in 6 seconds in normal operation mode and in less than 2 seconds in optional emergency operation mode
Put in a fast deployment severe tire damage initial border. That will shred the tires. Follow that with another border 175 meters further in enforced by these rapid deployment bollards (should be adequate to handle a bomb-carrying bomb moving at 250 kph/155 mph). Tie this into an automated radar system for deployment if someone crashes the gate.
Put in a 10 meter deep dry moat around the facility and on either side of the access road.
QED?
And if publishers lose, we all lose, because quite honestly ebooks are a far inferior experience to real, dead tree books.
You are conflating the issues. Publishers don't really provide much value anymore, and they engage in protectionist gatekeeping crap that squelches smaller authors or those who don't wish to "play ball". There are many analogues in other businesses. Take, for example, Ticketmaster... how the hell can they call it a "convenience fee" if I am buying the ticket at the venue's box office? But I digress...
I believe technology will also come to the rescue wrt your dead tree book concerns: Print on demand
As this technology evolves, there will be almost no overhead that the B&M's currently face, due to zero inventory. Just as digital photography hasn't killed the glossy print, I don't believe the popularity of e-books will kill the dead-tree market. Hell, a few years back Apple integrated into iPhoto a way to get your digital photos delivered as a printed book. The future could even be brighter than the present: what if you could inexpensively custom order your books to have leather binding, be a particular color, be in your favorite 'easy to read' font, etc? These value-adds would be fairly inexpensive to produce in a PoD scenario. Furthermore, "out of print" would become an obsolete concept: no more searching high and low, then paying an exorbitant price all for a thumbworn used book.
BTW, I have nothing against publishers if they evolve and actually provide value commensurate to their cost. Editing, "packaging" the book with cover art, marketing, etc, could all contribute value. However, "you have to use us or we will keep you from being able to sell your book because we have locked up the distribution channels" is the antithesis of value.
It would be better to catch herpes instead of leprosy, but personally I'll stay away from both.
I agree with your overall point. However, I disagree with your first assertion. Leprosy (Hansen's Disease) is caused by bacteria and is curable with antibiotics. Herpes, well... you get to take Valtrex for the rest of your life and hope it "reduces the risk" of transmission and "manages" your outbreak frequency. I assess "least worst" as a curable disease (presuming it is diagnosed before major damage is done).