I remember twenty years ago when Superman 3 was first released.
dejanews is failing me. I remember the movie newsgroups being
flooded with discussions of this film. Dejanews only found a
handful of articles...
Anyhow, the movie newsgroups were flooded with many reviewers
picking plot holes...
And I remember one wag posting something like this:
I have been reading all your critical comments on Superman 3 this
last couple of weeks. And, after seeing it myself, I have got
to agree -- this film was very unrealistic...
But I am going to disagree with you about what the most unrealistic
element was. Some of you said it was a drunken Richard Pryor taking
over the entire world using the computer literacy course he was
taught in prison... Other of you said the most unrealistic element
was...
Well, so far as I am concerned, the most unrealistic thing about this
film was the guy with the blue tights and the red cape.
I am not a metalurgist. Nor do I play one on TV. But I did do a little reading and little playing around when I was a teenager.
I can assure you, from practical experience, that the melting point is not as significant as you imply. The physical properties of metals change as significant heat is applied.
I am sure most of us have seen a blacksmith make a wrougth-iron horseshoe, or reasonable equivalent. They heat the work-place up in
their forge, until it is red-hot - which is still several hundred degrees below the melting point of iron. You heat it hot enough and
iron or steel loses most of its strength and become quite ductile.
I believe you will find the same to be true of all those other metals, and their alloys...
And, as this RISKS article illustrates, it is old news. Set the wayback machine for 1982 Sherman.
I know RISKS discussed beneficial viruses a long time ago.
I am still searching for that discussion. My recollection though
was that the consensus opinion was that it was a bad idea...
In fact I think we need a driver definition language that can be compiled into some abstract form (bytecodes) and put on each device. Then the OS could use a single known method (similar to PnP) to download those drivers and compile them into real code that will work for the given OS.
This sounds interesting. I think it is an interesting idea even if it didn't reach the goal in your final clause.
Can you explain how being written in this driver definition language would guarantee that the driver was crashproof?
Google helped. Searching for 'Soviet "serial killer" DNA' turned up links to the Rostov Ripper. However the links were contradictory. Some saying that the DNA of his blood and semen didn't match, as I recalled.
Others, like the one below, state that initial tests that cleared him were "errors".
By September 1983... They watched and noticed as Chikatilo tried to pick up girls. The police never approached him. Weeks later after they caught Chikatilo fondling an intoxicated girl they finally approached
him, asked for his papers and arrested him.
Fetisov hired Victor Burakov, who was an experienced crime investigator and took DNA samples from the sperm left on the bodies. They then took a blood sample from Chikatilo and since it did not match he was released. It later revealed the it did match his blood type. And they also later released him for lack of evidence.
Although he was twice suspected, he got away from arrest when his Sperm blood tests did not match his victims. Little did the Russian detectives know, such a case is rare in few people, whose blood DNA doesnt match their sperm DNA.
Apparently HBO made a movie, Citizen X about this case.
I haven't seen it, so I don't know how it deals with the DNA aspect.
Re:Physical issues resulting from this?
on
Chimera Twins Story
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
There was a brutal serial killer in Russia, or maybe the old Soviet
Union, who proved very difficult to catch, because DNA tests of his
blood and semen didn't match. At the time I wondered how his DNA could
fail to match. I guess this could be the explanation.
Did an anomalous genotype contribute to his mental pathology? No obvious mechanism comes to mind.
The original article quotes John Wheeler, a collaborator of the brilliant Richard Feynman, as a fan of this paper.
In my reading of his autobiographical, "Surely you are joking Mr Feynman?" I read some implied criticisms of Wheeler. I remember a chapter from this book where Wheeler and Feynman were going to address a small seminar of big brains at the Institute for Advanced Studies, at Princeton, where Einstein was a fellow. This was while Feynman was still a grad student, and Wheeler was his thesis supervisor. IIRC Feynman was nervous about addressing one theoretical aspect of the problem. Wheeler told him to address all the other aspects of the problem, and he would handle the part that made the tricky bit.
When it came time to give the presentation Feynman gives his portion of the presentation, but Wheeler begs off, saying he isn't quite ready, but he expects to complete a paper about it Real Soon Now.
I guess this is the Institute for Advanced Studies equivalent of "the dog ate my homework".
After the seminar Wolfgang Pauli took Feynman aside, and asked him if he could tell him anything about Wheeler's paper. Feynman said he couldn't, that Wheeler hadn't told him anything. IIRC, Pauli said something like, "He hasn't even told his own grad student about his ideas? That paper will never be written."
C is a living language, like English -- in that people develop idioms. I read an article, a long time ago, that made this point. It recommended adopting the good idioms of those around you.
Is:
while (*dest && *src)
{
*dest = *src;
++dest;
++src;
}
clearer than:
while (*dest++ = *src++)
continue;
I don't agree -- because of the idiom factor. Yes, the first is clearer to those who don't yet know C. But I believe the latter is clearer to experienced C programmers.
Interestingly, a moderator has moderated my original comment as "offtopic". LOL. A comment on C programming, that quoted a the original article, and inspired a dozen on-topic replies was "offtopic"? Why am I always the last to learn these things.
Until you look under the rocks and find out that there is a human corpse under each and every one of them... They pyramids were just a fancified death machine.:)
Yes, that is what we were taught in school -- that the pyramids were built with slave labour, with brutal working conditions. But there have been a number of documentaries about archeological investigations into the dormitories where the workers lived. IIRC the archeological evidence points to the workers not being slaves. IIRC the archeological evidence points to the workers working and living under reasonable circumstances.
Good point.
Ted Nelson corrected me about not using these names, in 1979.
But what do you call the ">" in a preprocessor #include statement?
"Angle brackets" is what I have heard them called...
I think it would be better if there was a generic term that applied to both the hydrothermal and lithothermal activity on any planet. Maybe there already is such a term.
Similarly I wish I knew the term used to describe phenomenon we would use the adjective "solar" for with our own sun. Other stars don't really have "solar" flares, right.
dejanews had a rival for a year or so.
They got bought out long ago.
Sorry, I can't remember their name.
But, if google really won't co-operate look up those other guys.
The null body of a for or while loop should be alone on a line and commented so that it is clear that the null body is intentional and not missing code.
while (*dest++ = *src++)
;/* VOID */
This could be rewritten as:
while (*dest++ = *src++)
continue;
I believe this is clearer, and less error prone.
Making a hybrid is not really cloning...
on
Cloning Mammoths
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The initial plan was to find mammoth sperm cells, which could be used to inseminate an elephant to create a mammoth-elephant hybrid. But no sperm cells have been found, and other samples retrieved have been rendered unusable by time and climate changes.
Finding mammoth sperm, and impregnating an elephant is not cloning, it is just artificial insemination.
Worth noting is that if it turns out that the mammoth is closely enough related to a modern elephant for a pup to be born that doesn't mean the beginning of mammoth-elephant ranching. Lots of hybrids aren't fertile, like
mules.
You ever hear of anyone crossing Indian and African elephants?
I said I would give an anecdote illustrating why it is foolish to assume that you don't have to state obvious objections to an idea. Dead wrong! Read and weap.
Years ago, my campus newspaper had a profile of a professor who had just been awarded funds to do a study on women's attitudes towards fitness and their negative images of their bodies.
It seemed like a good idea to me. But a female buddy came in, looked at the article, and was outraged. "What an obvious waste of money! Yada yada yada." I asked, and she explained to me why she thought it was a waste of money.
Another gal comes in. My buddy shows her the headline of the article that outraged her. The other gal agreed that the study was an outrageous waste of money. My buddy left. The second gal finished reading the article.
So, I asked her why she thought it was an outrage. Guess what? These two gals both thought they were in complete, loud, certain agreement that the study was an obvious waste of money, that there was no doubt as to how the money should best be spent.
But in their discussion with one another they never actually said why it was an outrage, and although they thought they were in complete agreement, their views were diametrically opposed.
One gal thought it was obvious the money should be spent teaching women to be more comfortable living with their bodies current shape and level of fitness. The other gal thought it was obvious the money should be spent teaching women to develop better fitness habits.
People who thought they agreed whose interpretations were actually diametrically opposed.
So, Miket01 and the a.c.? You think you are united in your outrage? Your views might be diametrically opposed
Guys, your contributions are not reasoned debate. Your contributions are not debate, at all. Other than that you disagree with him you haven't said anything. You write as if your objections to his reasoning are so obvious that they don't need stating.
I would be very interested in a reasoned rebutal to FTL's points -- if you have one.
So far as I am concerned your manner of stating your objections are anti-intelectual. Your objections not aren't obvious. They are culturally relative. Fast-forward a while and no one will have a clue what your objections are.
I have an anecdote, that illustrates this principle, but I will post it as a followup.
Squids have a hard beak inside, just like octopi.
If the carcass is complete, figuring out if it is a
squid should be easy, no matter how decomposed it is...
This guy is trolling. Read the quote below, and then tell me whether it corresponds to the description in his comment above. This quote was taken from his
slashdot bio on May 17th, 15:31 GMT.
I work as an embedded engineer for Transmeta Corp. I'm a part time linux kernal developer and born again muslim
Definitely this is the women-not-invited dept., as billed, but it reminds me of a conversation I had with a 98 year old woman in 1982. I was 28, had a toddler and an infant, and was very much afraid that motherhood would be the end of any other kind of creative work for me. (The exhaustion factor alone was daunting.)
Hey, would somebody mod this up? I love women, they are so mysterious. I would love an intelligent discussion of the differences between men and women's intellectual development.
..."Honey, women are not like men -- we get better with age. After all, you can't think straight until your parts settle. I promise, when you are 45, you'll know what you want to do with yourself, and it won't have anything to do with diapers."
She was right about women, or about me, at any rate. I'm 48...
What I notice is that my younger colleagues are quick and bright, but that what I lack in speed I make up in context...
I am a 46 year old male, and I experience something like this too. That quick, bright mind might skip over something old, boring, slow and steady, Mr or Ms Methodical picks up on.
And all of us are passionate about what we are doing, but the flavor is a little different depending on age. When we are working well together, the combination of gifts is truly wonderful. Perhaps instead of framing the "game" (of math or of anything else) as a contest, we ought to be looking at ways to make progress that makes use of both the experience of age and the quickness of youth.
I am reminded, again, of what Leo Szilard wrote, in one of his science fiction stories, written after he gave up Physics, after his central role in the Manhattan Project.
He wrote about humanity's cleverness having outstripped its wisdom. In the story his hero sets up a foundation to retard the progress of scientific knowledge, to give our wisdom a chance to catch up.
About the widely spread notion that math, physics etc, are fields were only the young come up with the paradigm shifting insights... I have also read the suggestion that it is new arrival in the field that really counts, and that the older person who switches fields can come up with the paradigm shifting notion too.
My knowledge of pure math is not sufficient to know this. Are these two recent, famous developments really paradigm shifting? Or are they admirable accomplishments, but more developments of existing ideas? Can anyone set me straight?
Slashdot Mirror
Anyhow, the movie newsgroups were flooded with many reviewers picking plot holes...
And I remember one wag posting something like this:
How does a multiple orbit re-entry make for a shorter, steeper re-entry? How would the design of such a shuttle differ from the ones that were built?
I can assure you, from practical experience, that the melting point is not as significant as you imply. The physical properties of metals change as significant heat is applied.
I am sure most of us have seen a blacksmith make a wrougth-iron horseshoe, or reasonable equivalent. They heat the work-place up in their forge, until it is red-hot - which is still several hundred degrees below the melting point of iron. You heat it hot enough and iron or steel loses most of its strength and become quite ductile.
I believe you will find the same to be true of all those other metals, and their alloys...
I know RISKS discussed beneficial viruses a long time ago. I am still searching for that discussion. My recollection though was that the consensus opinion was that it was a bad idea...
A year or so ago, on another occasion when we discussed his finances, I spent a couple of hours googling him.
Stallman has been the receipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant -- and a couple of other similar ones.
This sounds interesting. I think it is an interesting idea even if it didn't reach the goal in your final clause.
Can you explain how being written in this driver definition language would guarantee that the driver was crashproof?
Similar? Shoddy and incompetent investigation by the fired employee's superiors.
The whole vmyths.com site is extremely interesting. Funny too. I highly recommend it.
Others, like the one below, state that initial tests that cleared him were "errors".
The Rostov Ripper
This link says:
Apparently HBO made a movie, Citizen X about this case. I haven't seen it, so I don't know how it deals with the DNA aspect.
Did an anomalous genotype contribute to his mental pathology? No obvious mechanism comes to mind.
In my reading of his autobiographical, "Surely you are joking Mr Feynman?" I read some implied criticisms of Wheeler. I remember a chapter from this book where Wheeler and Feynman were going to address a small seminar of big brains at the Institute for Advanced Studies, at Princeton, where Einstein was a fellow. This was while Feynman was still a grad student, and Wheeler was his thesis supervisor. IIRC Feynman was nervous about addressing one theoretical aspect of the problem. Wheeler told him to address all the other aspects of the problem, and he would handle the part that made the tricky bit.
When it came time to give the presentation Feynman gives his portion of the presentation, but Wheeler begs off, saying he isn't quite ready, but he expects to complete a paper about it Real Soon Now.
I guess this is the Institute for Advanced Studies equivalent of "the dog ate my homework".
After the seminar Wolfgang Pauli took Feynman aside, and asked him if he could tell him anything about Wheeler's paper. Feynman said he couldn't, that Wheeler hadn't told him anything. IIRC, Pauli said something like, "He hasn't even told his own grad student about his ideas? That paper will never be written."
And it never was.
At least that is how I remember that chapter.
Is:
clearer than:
I don't agree -- because of the idiom factor. Yes, the first is clearer to those who don't yet know C. But I believe the latter is clearer to experienced C programmers.
Interestingly, a moderator has moderated my original comment as "offtopic". LOL. A comment on C programming, that quoted a the original article, and inspired a dozen on-topic replies was "offtopic"? Why am I always the last to learn these things.
Yes, that is what we were taught in school -- that the pyramids were built with slave labour, with brutal working conditions. But there have been a number of documentaries about archeological investigations into the dormitories where the workers lived. IIRC the archeological evidence points to the workers not being slaves. IIRC the archeological evidence points to the workers working and living under reasonable circumstances.
Good point.
Ted Nelson corrected me about not using these names, in 1979.
But what do you call the ">" in a preprocessor #include statement? "Angle brackets" is what I have heard them called...
Similarly I wish I knew the term used to describe phenomenon we would use the adjective "solar" for with our own sun. Other stars don't really have "solar" flares, right.
dejanews had a rival for a year or so. They got bought out long ago. Sorry, I can't remember their name. But, if google really won't co-operate look up those other guys.
This could be rewritten as:
I believe this is clearer, and less error prone.Finding mammoth sperm, and impregnating an elephant is not cloning, it is just artificial insemination.
Worth noting is that if it turns out that the mammoth is closely enough related to a modern elephant for a pup to be born that doesn't mean the beginning of mammoth-elephant ranching. Lots of hybrids aren't fertile, like mules.
You ever hear of anyone crossing Indian and African elephants?
Years ago, my campus newspaper had a profile of a professor who had just been awarded funds to do a study on women's attitudes towards fitness and their negative images of their bodies.
It seemed like a good idea to me. But a female buddy came in, looked at the article, and was outraged. "What an obvious waste of money! Yada yada yada." I asked, and she explained to me why she thought it was a waste of money.
Another gal comes in. My buddy shows her the headline of the article that outraged her. The other gal agreed that the study was an outrageous waste of money. My buddy left. The second gal finished reading the article.
So, I asked her why she thought it was an outrage. Guess what? These two gals both thought they were in complete, loud, certain agreement that the study was an obvious waste of money, that there was no doubt as to how the money should best be spent.
But in their discussion with one another they never actually said why it was an outrage, and although they thought they were in complete agreement, their views were diametrically opposed.
One gal thought it was obvious the money should be spent teaching women to be more comfortable living with their bodies current shape and level of fitness. The other gal thought it was obvious the money should be spent teaching women to develop better fitness habits.
People who thought they agreed whose interpretations were actually diametrically opposed.
So, Miket01 and the a.c.? You think you are united in your outrage? Your views might be diametrically opposed
Miket01 said something similar...
Guys, your contributions are not reasoned debate. Your contributions are not debate, at all. Other than that you disagree with him you haven't said anything. You write as if your objections to his reasoning are so obvious that they don't need stating.
I would be very interested in a reasoned rebutal to FTL's points -- if you have one.
So far as I am concerned your manner of stating your objections are anti-intelectual. Your objections not aren't obvious. They are culturally relative. Fast-forward a while and no one will have a clue what your objections are.
I have an anecdote, that illustrates this principle, but I will post it as a followup.
Squids have a hard beak inside, just like octopi. If the carcass is complete, figuring out if it is a squid should be easy, no matter how decomposed it is...
I am pretty sure this was reported here on slashdot a couple of months ago...
You don't think the stench of rotting fish would detract from its seductive qualities?
Sorry, what is "GWD"? Games of Wide Destruction?
He wrote about humanity's cleverness having outstripped its wisdom. In the story his hero sets up a foundation to retard the progress of scientific knowledge, to give our wisdom a chance to catch up.
About the widely spread notion that math, physics etc, are fields were only the young come up with the paradigm shifting insights... I have also read the suggestion that it is new arrival in the field that really counts, and that the older person who switches fields can come up with the paradigm shifting notion too.
My knowledge of pure math is not sufficient to know this. Are these two recent, famous developments really paradigm shifting? Or are they admirable accomplishments, but more developments of existing ideas? Can anyone set me straight?