Sounds more like the dictatorship Equatorial Guinea in west Africa, not Mozambique.
Neither of those are monarchies, though. (Moz is even a democracy) Perhaps you're thinking about Lesotho or Swaziland, both south African monarchies.. Although they don't have any significant oil AFAIK.
Something tells me this guy is making this all up.
Now why would a guy running a blog named "Professional blogger - Helping bloggers earn money" possibly want to exaggerate the amount of money he makes off his blogging?
I Said batteries in a GENERIC way, i didn't say Nickel-Metal or something like that. I understand perfectly how the fucking battery in my cellphone works, and not, i'm not talking about that kind of batterie,
I'd say it's quite obviousy you don't understand how a battery works, nor how a fuel cell works, since you fail to understand that a battery is a fuel cell. The only difference is that fuel cells have a continuous supply of fuel, and a battery has a constant one which runs out eventually.
I Don't have the {knowledge,resources,time} to research and tell you what kind of technology it could be
Well, at least you acknowledge that you don't know what you're talking about. But perhaps you should keep quiet until you do learn something about the subject.
Storing Materials (For example, Gasoline), and using it to produce energy is primitive and inadecuate. What we need is better, smaller batterys.
That is a stupid statement. Batteries are just as much 'storing materials' as oil or hydrogen. It's all chemical energy. Only that batteries are far worse at it! There is much less energy to be had oxidizing a pound of lead than oxidizing a pound of gasoline.
So, we have a form of energy (Electricity), that is clean, easy to store, cheap, and that is portable across different aplications
This article is about fuel cells. Fuel cells produce electricity directly. Saying that "Electricity is clean" is utterly moronic. It depends on where the energy for producing that electricity comes from! Do you think batteries grow on trees or something?
Besides which, no: Electricity is not easy to store. What are you proposing? Giant capacitors? Oh, right: Batteries. But batteries don't store electricity. Batteries store chemical energy.
Finally: Fuel cells already are the 'improved' batteries you are looking for.
Trier, latin name Augusta Treverorum (this one is Trier in English too;) )
Actually, "Treves" is used in English as well.
What is really interesting is looking at old maps. You can usually find all kinds of variants. Usually they're not even self-consistent. E.g I looked at an english map of central Europe where Belgrade was "Belgrade" (anglified slavic name), but Novi Sad was "Neusatz" (german name), and several of the surrounding towns had Hungarian or Slavic names or Germanified versions, or even anglified versions of the germanified versions.
Vitamin pills shouldn't be necessary at all - if you need them, then there's something wrong with your diet and/or lifestyle.
That's an overly scepticist view.
For instance, in Iceland it is so dark during the winter that it's simply not possible to get enough sun to avoid vitamin-D deficiency. Unless your view of a normal diet includes unusual amounts of cod-liver.
Dietary supplements wouldn't be necessary if everybody was living in a temperate environment and eating a good and varied diet. But most of the world's population don't fall into that category.
You're missing the point. String theory does simplify things.
The goal of physics is not to express stuff in as simple a mathematical expression as possible. It's to explain things in as few concepts as possible. Whether that requires difficult or simple math is irrelevant.
You can easily formulate a problem within classical mechanics which is not solvable by today's math. That doesn't mean the physics is wrong. It doesn't mean it's "too complex" either. It just means that our knowledge of math isn't up to the task.
the theory of Relativity - without it, different observers would observe different laws of physics
That is wrong. Relativity postulates that all observers observe the same laws of physics. It is one of the assumptions made in the model. And reducing the number of postulates is what makes a 'simpler' theory in physics.
Relativity was the first Modern theory of physics (quantum coming along later), which actually simplified things in this manner. It starts with given postulates and explained a whole bunch of physical laws which theretofore had been disconnected and seemingly arbitrary 'laws'.
Later, Quantum theory explained the rest. Both were also more general, they explained a far wider range of phenomena than had been known before.
Based on this, I conclude that if a theory about the fundamental structure of reality starts getting too complex for anyone to understand, the theory is almost certainly wrong. Or, to put it another way: there is a simpler, more fundamental way of looking at things.
What you're doing here is confusing 'simpler' and 'more fundamental'. Quantum mechanics is far more fundamental than classical mechanics. But the math is harder and more abstract. But most physicists would still call it a 'simpler' theory. Because it relies on far fewer and far simpler ideas.
String theory aims to be a simpler and more fundamental theory in much the same way. Mathematical complexity has nothing to do with it.
I've always thought that Beethoven's 9th symphony (and Beethoven generally) was incredibly overrated, just because everyone has heard of Ode to Joy. I'm no aficianado, but it seems generally all over the place and 'ding-dongy' - mindless triumphalism for the flag-waving plebs.
Listen to the whole thing. The Ninth is a heck of a lot more than just the Ode to Joy.
I agree that if you only listen to the Ode to Joy, and take it out of the context of the greater work, then it is mindless triumphalism.
For this reason I really, really hate those "best of the classics"-type mix albums with the most-well-known fragments of classical music.
They're the musical equivalent to sports videos with "Greatest goals" etc. Watching an amazing goal is fun. But it is nowhere near the same experience as watching a full game at the edge of your seat, and experienceing an amazing last-minute goal in its context.
Re:Boiling Point, Stupid!
on
How Ice Melts
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· Score: 1
I think the opposite problem is more interesting: Why does liquid take forever to get to the boiling point and then rapidly increase in temperature?
Problem solved: Liquids don't increase in temperature once they've reached their boiling point. Not as long as its in an open container so the surrounding pressure is constant.
Once you reach the boiling point, the heat you add doesn't go towards raising the temperature, but towards vaporising the liquid.
Um, did you read the link you posted? It seem to indicate: 1) They didn't know it was the 'oldest living thing on earth' when they cut it down, since that species of tree can't be dated accurately with core samples.
2) It was the oldest known *tree* on earth. Not the oldest 'living thing', which is something difficult to determine anyway. There are 43,000 year old strains of King's holly which (I think) would be the oldest plant, depending whether you consider vegetative reproduction to create a 'new individual' or not.
3) It's the oldest *known*. The linked article also clearly allows for the possiblity of older bristlecones, since they are apparently hard do date without cutting down.
Isn't it time they get rid of them instead? They don't have any meaning anymore. They just create a hassle when you have to remember if that site was '.org' or '.net' or '.com' or whatever.
And this in turn does nothing but generate business for domain-squatters anyway.
The internet is too big nowadays for tacking-on a TLD to provide unique identification. And 'solving' that by creating more TLDs only aggrevates the problem.
And de facto most people are using Google or some other search engine anyway. Guessing at the domain name just doesn't work as well as it once did.
What I've found is that people who are really, really sharp don't need to be assholes. They're smart, everyone knows they are smart, and they don't have anything to prove.
Well, they don't need to be. But some certainly are. I don't think people are either more or less likely to be an asshole purely based on their intelligence.
Well, not quite actually. It depends on the nature of their intelligence. It's certainly possible to be a genius in one particular field and be just terrible at everything else, including social skills.
But if you have a well-rounded intelligence, meaning you're the kind of person who takes interest in other subjects (even if you're got a specialization), then you're more likely to be a well-rounded person as well.
>>Put salt in the water. The ice and chilled water mixture gets colder with salt.
>Errggh.... no it doesn't:}
Errgh.. yes it does.
Salt in the water just allows it to be a liquid at a lower temp.
Which means what? It means that you've shifted the equillibrium between ice and water to a lower temperature. Which will lead to the ice melting faster until the depressed freezing-point is reached. (after which the melting will actually proceed slower than before since the whole solution is colder)
The reason you use ice in an icecream maker is to allow better thermal conduction to the container with the ice cream.
I assume you mean 'salt in an icecream maker'. And that is wrong too.
But if you don't take my word for it (although you should; I've got a degree in physical chemistry), then perhaps you should go look at this entry in the General Chemistry Online FAQ, which adresses exactly this.
Perhaps you should read the whole thing before you start correcting people on basic chemistry.
If I buy a TV tuner card, I don't want to examine the model numbers of all the chips on it just so I can use it to watch TV.
I get your point, but disagree with your choice of example. I've got a TV tuner card. I never had any problems with using it on linux, using RH 9 and now FC4 (test). Never had to check any model numbers. Nothing, eally. No more work than under windows. (and with more software to choose from, although I haven't really shopped around much)
the tvtime, program included in the FC4 distro is actually much nicer than the piece of crap windows software I got with the card. (Buggy and caused blue-screens often.)
GCC is obviously an exception. However, I interpreted the guy's statement as being directed at OSS projects in general, not just GCC.
Then you completely missed the context, since he was quite obviously referring to GCC in particular. Do OSS projects in general have a Steering Committee who decides which platforms are release-critical?
Err. This statement confuses me, being that I've been using GCC for all my Windows coding for several years now.
Then you've probably been using the C and C++ front-ends. Those have pretty good Windows support. Not all parts of GCC are that lucky.
Again, I wasn't making a direct repely to this guy's statement so much as expressing my opinion on a related topic.
Oh, so it was some theoretical entity that was being hypocritical, then?
Lines of GPL code designed, written, and released by me in the last year and a half: 43,380
Well congratulations then. And how many of these were in GCC? Because if they're not in GCC, I don't see how that is the least bit relevant.
If you write your code to be portable in the first place, fixing platform-specific issues should be quick and easy.
Bull. This guy is one of the main GCC hackers. GCC is a compiler, damnit. It doesn't get much less portable than that. Yet GCC runs on a huge number of platforms.
But that has not come quickly nor easily. Or are you claiming that GCC isn't written with portability in mind?
Actually, I think a much larger problem is just that: Many OSS developers don't even try to support Windows. Yes, I know you hate the OS and don't want to support Microsoft, etc., etc..
Lack of windows support in GCC has little to do with hating windows and a lot more to do with a lack of developers on windows.
But, how can you complain about major software not supporting Linux when you're writing your own software that doesn't support Windows? Isn't that entirely hypocritical?
And where did Ulrich complain about major software not supporting Linux?
My take: Port your software to every platform you can, especially Windows.
Yeah, it's easy to tell others what they should do when you're not doing the work yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds more like the dictatorship Equatorial Guinea in west Africa, not Mozambique.
Neither of those are monarchies, though. (Moz is even a democracy) Perhaps you're thinking about Lesotho or Swaziland, both south African monarchies.. Although they don't have any significant oil AFAIK.
Something tells me this guy is making this all up.
Now why would a guy running a blog named "Professional blogger - Helping bloggers earn money" possibly want to exaggerate the amount of money he makes off his blogging?
I Said batteries in a GENERIC way, i didn't say Nickel-Metal or something like that. I understand perfectly how the fucking battery in my cellphone works, and not, i'm not talking about that kind of batterie,
I'd say it's quite obviousy you don't understand how a battery works, nor how a fuel cell works, since you fail to understand that a battery is a fuel cell. The only difference is that fuel cells have a continuous supply of fuel, and a battery has a constant one which runs out eventually.
I Don't have the {knowledge,resources,time} to research and tell you what kind of technology it could be
Well, at least you acknowledge that you don't know what you're talking about. But perhaps you should keep quiet until you do learn something about the subject.
Storing Materials (For example, Gasoline), and using it to produce energy is primitive and inadecuate. What we need is better, smaller batterys.
That is a stupid statement. Batteries are just as much 'storing materials' as oil or hydrogen. It's all chemical energy. Only that batteries are far worse at it! There is much less energy to be had oxidizing a pound of lead than oxidizing a pound of gasoline.
So, we have a form of energy (Electricity), that is clean, easy to store, cheap, and that is portable across different aplications
This article is about fuel cells. Fuel cells produce electricity directly. Saying that "Electricity is clean" is utterly moronic. It depends on where the energy for producing that electricity comes from! Do you think batteries grow on trees or something?
Besides which, no: Electricity is not easy to store. What are you proposing? Giant capacitors? Oh, right: Batteries. But batteries don't store electricity. Batteries store chemical energy.
Finally: Fuel cells already are the 'improved' batteries you are looking for.
Trier, latin name Augusta Treverorum (this one is Trier in English too ;) )
Actually, "Treves" is used in English as well.
What is really interesting is looking at old maps. You can usually find all kinds of variants. Usually they're not even self-consistent. E.g I looked at an english map of central Europe where Belgrade was "Belgrade" (anglified slavic name), but Novi Sad was "Neusatz" (german name), and several of the surrounding towns had Hungarian or Slavic names or Germanified versions, or even anglified versions of the germanified versions.
Vitamin pills shouldn't be necessary at all - if you need them, then there's something wrong with your diet and/or lifestyle.
That's an overly scepticist view.
For instance, in Iceland it is so dark during the winter that it's simply not possible to get enough sun to avoid vitamin-D deficiency. Unless your view of a normal diet includes unusual amounts of cod-liver.
Dietary supplements wouldn't be necessary if everybody was living in a temperate environment and eating a good and varied diet. But most of the world's population don't fall into that category.
Which would be worse - Adolf Hitler cloned or Bill Gates cloned - 100 years from now?
Hitler. I have a hard time imagining that movie would be any less crappy in 100 years.
You're missing the point. String theory does simplify things.
The goal of physics is not to express stuff in as simple a mathematical expression as possible. It's to explain things in as few concepts as possible. Whether that requires difficult or simple math is irrelevant.
You can easily formulate a problem within classical mechanics which is not solvable by today's math. That doesn't mean the physics is wrong. It doesn't mean it's "too complex" either. It just means that our knowledge of math isn't up to the task.
the theory of Relativity - without it, different observers would observe different laws of physics
That is wrong. Relativity postulates that all observers observe the same laws of physics. It is one of the assumptions made in the model. And reducing the number of postulates is what makes a 'simpler' theory in physics.
Relativity was the first Modern theory of physics (quantum coming along later), which actually simplified things in this manner. It starts with given postulates and explained a whole bunch of physical laws which theretofore had been disconnected and seemingly arbitrary 'laws'.
Later, Quantum theory explained the rest. Both were also more general, they explained a far wider range of phenomena than had been known before.
Based on this, I conclude that if a theory about the fundamental structure of reality starts getting too complex for anyone to understand, the theory is almost certainly wrong. Or, to put it another way: there is a simpler, more fundamental way of looking at things.
What you're doing here is confusing 'simpler' and 'more fundamental'. Quantum mechanics is far more fundamental than classical mechanics. But the math is harder and more abstract. But most physicists would still call it a 'simpler' theory. Because it relies on far fewer and far simpler ideas.
String theory aims to be a simpler and more fundamental theory in much the same way. Mathematical complexity has nothing to do with it.
I've always thought that Beethoven's 9th symphony (and Beethoven generally) was incredibly overrated, just because everyone has heard of Ode to Joy. I'm no aficianado, but it seems generally all over the place and 'ding-dongy' - mindless triumphalism for the flag-waving plebs.
Listen to the whole thing. The Ninth is a heck of a lot more than just the Ode to Joy.
I agree that if you only listen to the Ode to Joy, and take it out of the context of the greater work, then it is mindless triumphalism.
For this reason I really, really hate those "best of the classics"-type mix albums with the most-well-known fragments of classical music.
They're the musical equivalent to sports videos with "Greatest goals" etc. Watching an amazing goal is fun. But it is nowhere near the same experience as watching a full game at the edge of your seat, and experienceing an amazing last-minute goal in its context.
I think the opposite problem is more interesting: Why does liquid take forever to get to the boiling point and then rapidly increase in temperature?
Problem solved: Liquids don't increase in temperature once they've reached their boiling point. Not as long as its in an open container so the surrounding pressure is constant.
Once you reach the boiling point, the heat you add doesn't go towards raising the temperature, but towards vaporising the liquid.
Um, did you read the link you posted?
It seem to indicate:
1) They didn't know it was the 'oldest living thing on earth' when they cut it down, since that species of tree can't be dated accurately with core samples.
2) It was the oldest known *tree* on earth. Not the oldest 'living thing', which is something difficult to determine anyway. There are 43,000 year old strains of King's holly which (I think) would be the oldest plant, depending whether you consider vegetative reproduction to create a 'new individual' or not.
3) It's the oldest *known*. The linked article also clearly allows for the possiblity of older bristlecones, since they are apparently hard do date without cutting down.
Another TLD.. Who-hoo.
Isn't it time they get rid of them instead? They don't have any meaning anymore. They just create a hassle when you have to remember if that site was '.org' or '.net' or '.com' or whatever.
And this in turn does nothing but generate business for domain-squatters anyway.
The internet is too big nowadays for tacking-on a TLD to provide unique identification. And 'solving' that by creating more TLDs only aggrevates the problem.
And de facto most people are using Google or some other search engine anyway. Guessing at the domain name just doesn't work as well as it once did.
What I've found is that people who are really, really sharp don't need to be assholes. They're smart, everyone knows they are smart, and they don't have anything to prove.
Well, they don't need to be. But some certainly are. I don't think people are either more or less likely to be an asshole purely based on their intelligence.
Well, not quite actually. It depends on the nature of their intelligence. It's certainly possible to be a genius in one particular field and be just terrible at everything else, including social skills.
But if you have a well-rounded intelligence, meaning you're the kind of person who takes interest in other subjects (even if you're got a specialization), then you're more likely to be a well-rounded person as well.
Ironic how you proved the point by not being able to take a joke..
Troll indeed.. Let's see.. you're comparing a cross platform GUI toolkit against:
1) A toy programming language
2) A C++ compiler and IDE
That's not apples-and-oranges. Those aren't even fruit!
Isn't SUN the company that said OSS is a cancer in 2001? Now come 2005 and they are embracing "the CANCER?"
No, they didn't. They've said bad things about the GPL, for sure, but not about OSS.
Perhaps you should recall them open-sourcing OpenOffice in 2000?
I am supprised about SUN's move and wonder whether this move by SUN will also mean that it will be more open about SCO's case.
What the heck does any of this have to do with the SCO case?
Sheesh, drop the "with us or against us" attitude, will you?
You know what data is always missing from this list that we'd all like to see ? The cost of the systems.
Well, Lenngren (#65) is a few months old, and costed (at the current exchange rate) about $250,000.
So, not as bad as one would think perhaps, it's commodity hardware after all, except for the infiniband networking hardware, really.
A grand total of 25 machines. Versus 333 machines for Intel.
:)
If I were an AMD fan.. I'd just say nothing
What's surprising to me is that Cray used to be synonymous with supercomputers and they now have comparatively few entries.
Cray still makes some of the fastest supercomputers around. They do not, however, make supercomputing clusters, which this list includes.
So you're comparing rather different things. And it's an important difference since not all computing tasks can be parallelized.
>>Put salt in the water. The ice and chilled water mixture gets colder with salt.
:}
>Errggh.... no it doesn't
Errgh.. yes it does.
Salt in the water just allows it to be a liquid at a lower temp.
Which means what? It means that you've shifted the equillibrium between ice and water to a lower temperature. Which will lead to the ice melting faster until the depressed freezing-point is reached. (after which the melting will actually proceed slower than before since the whole solution is colder)
The reason you use ice in an icecream maker is to allow better thermal conduction to the container with the ice cream.
I assume you mean 'salt in an icecream maker'. And that is wrong too.
But if you don't take my word for it (although you should; I've got a degree in physical chemistry), then perhaps you should go look at this entry in the General Chemistry Online FAQ, which adresses exactly this.
Perhaps you should read the whole thing before you start correcting people on basic chemistry.
If I buy a TV tuner card, I don't want to examine the model numbers of all the chips on it just so I can use it to watch TV.
I get your point, but disagree with your choice of example. I've got a TV tuner card. I never had any problems with using it on linux, using RH 9 and now FC4 (test). Never had to check any model numbers. Nothing, eally. No more work than under windows. (and with more software to choose from, although I haven't really shopped around much)
the tvtime, program included in the FC4 distro is actually much nicer than the piece of crap windows software I got with the card. (Buggy and caused blue-screens often.)
GCC is obviously an exception. However, I interpreted the guy's statement as being directed at OSS projects in general, not just GCC.
Then you completely missed the context, since he was quite obviously referring to GCC in particular. Do OSS projects in general have a Steering Committee who decides which platforms are release-critical?
Err. This statement confuses me, being that I've been using GCC for all my Windows coding for several years now.
Then you've probably been using the C and C++ front-ends. Those have pretty good Windows support. Not all parts of GCC are that lucky.
Again, I wasn't making a direct repely to this guy's statement so much as expressing my opinion on a related topic.
Oh, so it was some theoretical entity that was being hypocritical, then?
Lines of GPL code designed, written, and released by me in the last year and a half: 43,380
Well congratulations then. And how many of these were in GCC? Because if they're not in GCC, I don't see how that is the least bit relevant.
Ok, got it.
I made the mistake of assuming you were talking about stationary states.
If you write your code to be portable in the first place, fixing platform-specific issues should be quick and easy.
Bull. This guy is one of the main GCC hackers. GCC is a compiler, damnit. It doesn't get much less portable than that. Yet GCC runs on a huge number of platforms.
But that has not come quickly nor easily. Or are you claiming that GCC isn't written with portability in mind?
Actually, I think a much larger problem is just that: Many OSS developers don't even try to support Windows. Yes, I know you hate the OS and don't want to support Microsoft, etc., etc..
Lack of windows support in GCC has little to do with hating windows and a lot more to do with a lack of developers on windows.
But, how can you complain about major software not supporting Linux when you're writing your own software that doesn't support Windows? Isn't that entirely hypocritical?
And where did Ulrich complain about major software not supporting Linux?
My take: Port your software to every platform you can, especially Windows.
Yeah, it's easy to tell others what they should do when you're not doing the work yourself.
Initially, I was in a superposition of |up, down> and |down, up>.
Ok. I don't understand this. I don't think that's not a eigenfunction of the spin-projection of a pure spin state.
Can you explain how this coherent spin-flip works in more detail?