It takes a decent amount of electricity to run that much hardware.
A 2KW setup of machines (all crunching numbers) could heat up a room as efficiently as a 2KW electric heater, so why not use it in this way? You could even make a climate control that starts/stops @Home-processes to get a constant room temperature. Sounds fun (and a bit nerdish).
Yes, that would really be cost-effective.. not. *Maybe* it could be done with an ion engine, but I'm not even sure of that. And it's not trivial to dock with a dead object that could be spinning in unforeseen ways.
Besides, the maximum altitude of the shuttle is about 400km, iirc.
Personally I would say it's a waste to let all that material burn up, I would much rather see a "recycling station", considering the price/kg to put something in orbit. Something like a big trussed frame with a net containing all the junk, stripping solar panels and other usable parts. But even then there are practical constraints that could make this not worthwhile, like the hazards of handling the unused fuel (hydrazine is really nasty stuff).
Of course they don't get it, they reserve that realisation for the day they are out of a job. When I was a kid, I often looked in my father's copy of Britannica, and I really do respect what they have created, but, you know, times have changed. Thinking that they haven't is just foolish.
To quote the article:
"It's very much used by many people because it covers many topics and it's the No.1 search result on Google. It's not necessarily that people go to Wikipedia."
Hmm, Ridiculous. I often just bypass google and go to Wikipedia directly. The only reason that I sometimes use google for reaching wikipedia articles is that the search engine of wikipedia itself is way too strict.
I think Britannica will go, one way or another. I think maybe their only hope is to work together with wikipedia, in assisting them to become better reviewed. I don't really have an answer for the financial picture but I think a nonprofit organization might be the only way.
Nobody's forcing you to go, so STFU whining. It's obvious money is the only thing on your mind, so stay here and spend it on shit. And when the population hits 15 billion, and you are starving and constantly at war, you can look up to the skys and wonder how the others are getting on.
I've never met a bigger bunch of whiney kids !
Space is not just for fun. It is important for the survival of life on earth. It has an important philosophical and scientific role to play. I'm a big advocate for space exploration. Unmanned space exploration, that is. At least for the time being.
But your comment doesn't make sense. Do you imply that we won't be 15 billion and starving because we send a couple of people to mars? Or do you live in a fantasy world where we will be able to send off billions of people to a terraformed mars in the next fifty years? Are you saying a mars mission will stop war? If so, how?
In my opinion, it is the other way around. By electing leaders that prevent wars, we can free money for space exploration. When people stop having to think about how they are going to survive the next day, they can start thinking about getting some scientific education, and those people will come up with the basis for technologies that will eventually send people to mars. But I came to accept that it won't happen tomorrow. First we have answer some important questions. How are we going to feed everyone? How are we going to get rid of our oil addiction (there still is oil, but the production is slowly peaking, and tapping more oil fields - in unstable regions - will cause a lot of human suffering, mark my words). First we need to learn how to be more humane before we can set our next goal: human space exploration and colonization.
One might argue that mars would be easier to land on if it had no athmosphere at all. The low pressure means that you're going to need a huge, monstrous parachute to decelerate enough, and you wont be able to use retro rockets until your speed is low enough (subsonic speeds). If you fire at supersonic speeds, all sorts of nasty things happen.
It is explained further here. This article was even covered on slashdot.
Obama has already made space exploration a back burner issue
I don't think that's a bad thing. The whole "humans to mars" thing is very optimistic once you realize everything involved. In my opinion, it's just a way for contractor to receive a lot of money without the need for deliverables, because it won't get launched. I still have a book from when I was a kid preaching the same fantasies about the ISS, together with pictures that are simply ludicrous when you compare it to what's being built. Now, we are hurrying to get it finished in time so it can be dumped in the pacific ocean.
When you look at the computer science revolution, and the amount of remote sensing that's being made possible, the idea that humans need to be there is foolish; sure, a scientist could work faster in situ, but when you look at the price tag, it should be enough to send a hundred of mars science laboratories there, each working for years and years. But somehow, we are being sold a mission to send a scientist to mars for a few weeks (I'm sure the rest would be military and then I'm being optimistic). Unless you really think they would choose to miss the launch window back and stay there for two years. Where is the scientific profit?
To make my point, I would suggest they start planning a sample return mission, and once they get some martian soil back on earth, maybe we could reopen the discussion. Untill then, I will keep repeating it is a ripoff scheme, spun by some big companies who smell easy money.
If you look at it that way you are correct, I misused the word deterministic a bit. But, as is described in the lecture I linked to, these factors are not relevant to the algorithm. You cannot use cpu time as a measurement of performance because factors like page boundaries, caches etc. influence it in unforseeable ways. In that sense undeterministic isn't isn't such a bad choice of words.
There is a very interesting channel on youtube called googletechtalks. There, you can find a lecture called "We have it easy, but do we have it right" about performance measures that really made me worry. Basically you can't just easilly compare performance by measuring the cpu time, because there are a lot of factors that determine performance. E.g.: by adding a environment variable before running a program, this can cause page allignments to change (even if the environment variable isn't used by the program), changing the performance dramatically in some cases. Same goes for changing the link order: performance can change by 20%.
Not to mention that - according to the same religious data - even if we lead a perfectly ethical life, or are a freshly born baby, we are still sinners because some woman talked a man into eating an apple a few thousands years ago. That's highly unethical, so God is the last one you should turn to when discussing ethics.
you really want your vision to be so easily taken away?
What's the difference with real eyes? Give me a spoon, a fork or any combination thereof and I can make you blind in a few seconds.
Personally, I'd just like some extra eyes. Full 360 degrees vision seems cool, and I can also figure out some uses for eyes on my toes. (I just hope skirts won't go out of fashion).
And may I stress here that bug reporting is one of the most helpful things you can do for any open source project? If you can provide a simple way to reproduce a problem, it is likely as good as fixed.
So, don't complain, report! (after that you may optionally complain). But don't assume developers will find it themselves, or that others will report the problem for you..
I really don't get why people are so reluctant to consider that burning 80 million barrels of oil each day does not affect the climate. I keep hearing those "Oh, I don't believe it" voices on/., but really, is it anything else than an excuse for not changing a wasteful lifestyle? A bit like an addict would deny having a problem?
< is for indenting to the left, > is to the right and = is auto-formatting. With code it will indent it to your liking (the default indentation can be modified throug settings), with text it will perform word-wrapping.
Here are my favorites:
in insert mode, you can press CTRL-p to do auto-completion (searches for possible completions in the text, or CTRL-x-f for filename completion (like pressing tab in bash).
Another nice one is CTRL-a and CTRL-x in normal mode. It will increment/decrement the number under the cursor, and it will work with decimal, octal and hex numbers.
In normal mode, macro's can save your day sometimes. For example:
1) Go to insert mode, type 1, and go back to normal mode. 2) qq (this will start recording macro 'q' - qy would have assigned it to macro 'y') 3) yyp (yank-yank-paste, yy yanks a line (other term for copy), and pastes it on the next line) 4) CTRL-A to increment that number 5) q to stop recording macro
Invocing a macro is done using '@'. @q executes macro q, @@ executes the last executed macro again, 10@q executes macro q ten times,..
(Too bad nobody uses line-numbered basic interpreters any more, for this macro would have saved them a lot of time 8-).
Omnipotence is problematic. The famous example is "Is it possible for an omnipotent creature to create a rock so heavy that he can not lift it?". Both answers would mean he's not omnipotent. So that makes all such religions look.. well.. PLAIN STUPID.
Really, even if there was a God, and there's about as much evidence supporting that as there is of the existance of the unicorn, I would not bow to him. In fact, I would tell him to fuck off, and leave me alone. Really, I would hate to spend my life worshipping some narcistic prick. Please, just get over it.
Just fyi, If you want to ride a space elevator in 36 hours, you would be going at 1000km/hour to reach geostationary orbit. Let's assume you can make the car go at 100km/h, it would take you 360 hours. That's 15 days. Or a month at 50km/h. Or two months at 25km/h.
Sounds like an idea for a slashdot poll. (I would go. No doubt about it - sorry to all my family and friends, but the chance to kickstart a civilisation is too big to let go).
Indeed, you are right about Spirit and Opportunity.. I almost forgot.
I am fairly confident that NASA has made the correct choice about the EDL method, but I really wonder if they are going to be ready in 2009. I haven't seen any photo's of the MSL construction, so I don't even know if they have already started building it or not. Or are they planning to do construction in just a few months? I know the science instruments are all (nearly) finished, but I hardly hear news about the rest of the hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
It takes a decent amount of electricity to run that much hardware.
A 2KW setup of machines (all crunching numbers) could heat up a room as efficiently as a 2KW electric heater, so why not use it in this way? You could even make a climate control that starts/stops @Home-processes to get a constant room temperature. Sounds fun (and a bit nerdish).
It's called the Kessler syndrome. And it's a real threat.
Yes, that would really be cost-effective.. not. *Maybe* it could be done with an ion engine, but I'm not even sure of that. And it's not trivial to dock with a dead object that could be spinning in unforeseen ways.
Besides, the maximum altitude of the shuttle is about 400km, iirc.
Personally I would say it's a waste to let all that material burn up, I would much rather see a "recycling station", considering the price/kg to put something in orbit. Something like a big trussed frame with a net containing all the junk, stripping solar panels and other usable parts. But even then there are practical constraints that could make this not worthwhile, like the hazards of handling the unused fuel (hydrazine is really nasty stuff).
Of course they don't get it, they reserve that realisation for the day they are out of a job. When I was a kid, I often looked in my father's copy of Britannica, and I really do respect what they have created, but, you know, times have changed. Thinking that they haven't is just foolish.
To quote the article:
"It's very much used by many people because it covers many topics and it's the No.1 search result on Google. It's not necessarily that people go to Wikipedia."
Hmm, Ridiculous. I often just bypass google and go to Wikipedia directly. The only reason that I sometimes use google for reaching wikipedia articles is that the search engine of wikipedia itself is way too strict.
I think Britannica will go, one way or another. I think maybe their only hope is to work together with wikipedia, in assisting them to become better reviewed. I don't really have an answer for the financial picture but I think a nonprofit organization might be the only way.
You obviously never heard of Gödel.
Or maybe it just shows it's time to liberate the Dutch from a terrorist regime.
Nobody's forcing you to go, so STFU whining.
It's obvious money is the only thing on your mind, so stay here and spend it on shit. And when the population hits 15 billion, and you are starving and constantly at war, you can look up to the skys and wonder how the others are getting on.
I've never met a bigger bunch of whiney kids !
Space is not just for fun. It is important for the survival of life on earth. It has an important philosophical and scientific role to play. I'm a big advocate for space exploration. Unmanned space exploration, that is. At least for the time being.
But your comment doesn't make sense. Do you imply that we won't be 15 billion and starving because we send a couple of people to mars? Or do you live in a fantasy world where we will be able to send off billions of people to a terraformed mars in the next fifty years? Are you saying a mars mission will stop war? If so, how?
In my opinion, it is the other way around. By electing leaders that prevent wars, we can free money for space exploration. When people stop having to think about how they are going to survive the next day, they can start thinking about getting some scientific education, and those people will come up with the basis for technologies that will eventually send people to mars. But I came to accept that it won't happen tomorrow. First we have answer some important questions. How are we going to feed everyone? How are we going to get rid of our oil addiction (there still is oil, but the production is slowly peaking, and tapping more oil fields - in unstable regions - will cause a lot of human suffering, mark my words). First we need to learn how to be more humane before we can set our next goal: human space exploration and colonization.
One might argue that mars would be easier to land on if it had no athmosphere at all. The low pressure means that you're going to need a huge, monstrous parachute to decelerate enough, and you wont be able to use retro rockets until your speed is low enough (subsonic speeds). If you fire at supersonic speeds, all sorts of nasty things happen.
It is explained further here. This article was even covered on slashdot.
Obama has already made space exploration a back burner issue
I don't think that's a bad thing. The whole "humans to mars" thing is very optimistic once you realize everything involved. In my opinion, it's just a way for contractor to receive a lot of money without the need for deliverables, because it won't get launched. I still have a book from when I was a kid preaching the same fantasies about the ISS, together with pictures that are simply ludicrous when you compare it to what's being built. Now, we are hurrying to get it finished in time so it can be dumped in the pacific ocean.
When you look at the computer science revolution, and the amount of remote sensing that's being made possible, the idea that humans need to be there is foolish; sure, a scientist could work faster in situ, but when you look at the price tag, it should be enough to send a hundred of mars science laboratories there, each working for years and years. But somehow, we are being sold a mission to send a scientist to mars for a few weeks (I'm sure the rest would be military and then I'm being optimistic). Unless you really think they would choose to miss the launch window back and stay there for two years. Where is the scientific profit?
To make my point, I would suggest they start planning a sample return mission, and once they get some martian soil back on earth, maybe we could reopen the discussion. Untill then, I will keep repeating it is a ripoff scheme, spun by some big companies who smell easy money.
My personal theory is that the reviewers were thinking "Whatever they're smoking, I hope they share it".
If you look at it that way you are correct, I misused the word deterministic a bit. But, as is described in the lecture I linked to, these factors are not relevant to the algorithm. You cannot use cpu time as a measurement of performance because factors like page boundaries, caches etc. influence it in unforseeable ways. In that sense undeterministic isn't isn't such a bad choice of words.
There is a very interesting channel on youtube called googletechtalks. There, you can find a lecture called "We have it easy, but do we have it right" about performance measures that really made me worry. Basically you can't just easilly compare performance by measuring the cpu time, because there are a lot of factors that determine performance. E.g.: by adding a environment variable before running a program, this can cause page allignments to change (even if the environment variable isn't used by the program), changing the performance dramatically in some cases. Same goes for changing the link order: performance can change by 20%.
So much for determinism.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKVRkfXrBpg
I don't get it.. What words are contradictory, in your opinion?
In any case, IMO it's not an oxymoron, it's a joke. It's sarcasm. It's based on my experiences. All that.
Not to mention that - according to the same religious data - even if we lead a perfectly ethical life, or are a freshly born baby, we are still sinners because some woman talked a man into eating an apple a few thousands years ago. That's highly unethical, so God is the last one you should turn to when discussing ethics.
Now we know why the spider was covered with tatoos...
you really want your vision to be so easily taken away?
What's the difference with real eyes? Give me a spoon, a fork or any combination thereof and I can make you blind in a few seconds.
Personally, I'd just like some extra eyes. Full 360 degrees vision seems cool, and I can also figure out some uses for eyes on my toes. (I just hope skirts won't go out of fashion).
PS: xkcd reference intended.
And may I stress here that bug reporting is one of the most helpful things you can do for any open source project? If you can provide a simple way to reproduce a problem, it is likely as good as fixed.
So, don't complain, report! (after that you may optionally complain). But don't assume developers will find it themselves, or that others will report the problem for you..
I really don't get why people are so reluctant to consider that burning 80 million barrels of oil each day does not affect the climate. I keep hearing those "Oh, I don't believe it" voices on /., but really, is it anything else than an excuse for not changing a wasteful lifestyle? A bit like an addict would deny having a problem?
< is for indenting to the left, > is to the right and = is auto-formatting. With code it will indent it to your liking (the default indentation can be modified throug settings), with text it will perform word-wrapping.
Here are my favorites:
in insert mode, you can press CTRL-p to do auto-completion (searches for possible completions in the text, or CTRL-x-f for filename completion (like pressing tab in bash).
Another nice one is CTRL-a and CTRL-x in normal mode. It will increment/decrement the number under the cursor, and it will work with decimal, octal and hex numbers.
In normal mode, macro's can save your day sometimes. For example:
1) Go to insert mode, type 1, and go back to normal mode.
2) qq (this will start recording macro 'q' - qy would have assigned it to macro 'y')
3) yyp (yank-yank-paste, yy yanks a line (other term for copy), and pastes it on the next line)
4) CTRL-A to increment that number
5) q to stop recording macro
Invocing a macro is done using '@'. @q executes macro q, @@ executes the last executed macro again, 10@q executes macro q ten times, ..
(Too bad nobody uses line-numbered basic interpreters any more, for this macro would have saved them a lot of time 8-).
Omnipotence is problematic. The famous example is "Is it possible for an omnipotent creature to create a rock so heavy that he can not lift it?". Both answers would mean he's not omnipotent. So that makes all such religions look.. well.. PLAIN STUPID.
Really, even if there was a God, and there's about as much evidence supporting that as there is of the existance of the unicorn, I would not bow to him. In fact, I would tell him to fuck off, and leave me alone. Really, I would hate to spend my life worshipping some narcistic prick. Please, just get over it.
I totally agree, the gp is mixing exploring and kolonizing.
All the mars probes have been exploring mars: the athmosphere, minerals, history, water, and subsurface. All by remote control.
Just fyi, If you want to ride a space elevator in 36 hours, you would be going at 1000km/hour to reach geostationary orbit. Let's assume you can make the car go at 100km/h, it would take you 360 hours. That's 15 days. Or a month at 50km/h. Or two months at 25km/h.
Sounds like an idea for a slashdot poll. (I would go. No doubt about it - sorry to all my family and friends, but the chance to kickstart a civilisation is too big to let go).
Really? Damn, I just finished rewriting linux in javascript, guess I can start over again.
Indeed, you are right about Spirit and Opportunity.. I almost forgot.
I am fairly confident that NASA has made the correct choice about the EDL method, but I really wonder if they are going to be ready in 2009. I haven't seen any photo's of the MSL construction, so I don't even know if they have already started building it or not. Or are they planning to do construction in just a few months? I know the science instruments are all (nearly) finished, but I hardly hear news about the rest of the hardware.