Does democracy fail when the population reaches a critical mass?
Think about the "economics" (in the most general sense" of voting. Carefully considering all the candidates takes a substantial amount of time. Getting to a voting booth and voting takes more time. Your opportunity cost for voting is your time.
What do you gain by voting? A very small chance at influencing an election between two fairly similar candidates. Your effective benefit is the benefit you would gain if you swung the election, times the chance your vote will actually be significant.
As population increases, the power of your vote decreases. At some point, your effective benefit from voting becomes less than your opportunity cost, and it is no longer rational for you to vote.
So should nobody vote? Not necessarily. As less people vote, individual votes become more important. Some people have more to gain from influencing an election (or their time is worth less), so they're more likely to "stick with it" and vote. The result is an equilibrium, where a bunch of people don't vote because it's not worth their time, a bunch more do vote because it is, and a few people are right on the fence...
This suggests that the non-voters could be just as rational as the voters (or perhaps more so)--they just value their time more and their vote less than the voters.
The scary thing is that the people for whom it makes the most sense to vote are those whose time is worthless, or who don't bother to carefully consider the candidates... Explains a lot, doesn't it?
Mathematica doesn't have a dongle... I saw people in my physics class trading around a Mathematica CD just the other day.
Why were they trading it? The physics lab server is slow, and it's inconvenient to walk all the way to the damn physics building do to some work. SSH/X port forwarding is screwed up on that server, and you need special mathematica fonts, so you can't really use it remotely.
If those people couldn't get a pirated copy, they would just have to use the legit versions in the lab. They can't afford to buy Mathematica, and it wouldn't really be worth the cost, anyway. Wolfram Research isn't losing out a bit through them pirating it.
What happens when they graduate? Wolfram now has that much more market share over Maple and its other competitors, thanks to those "pirates". Once they have real jobs in physics or whatever, they'll probably buy Mathematica (or ge the department to buy it).
Do you trust your government with unlimited power? I don't. Hell, I don't even trust myself with unlimited power. If nanotechnology is unevenly distributed, the "haves" will have unlimited power over the "have-nots".
Imagine if the government decided to use nanotech to "rehabilitate" those with "un-American" thinking patterns... Forget Cyberpatrol and NetNanny, you can censor people's minds with nanotech... If one person or group has nanotech, everyone has to have it, or that person or group gains essentially limitless power.
If everyone is capable of looking after their own needs, what role will governments play? Will we need them, or will they cease to be a necessary evil?
Imagine what could happen if one group got way ahead of everybody else in nanotech... They might get cocky and accidentally cause the grey-goo problem (world reduced to goo by accidentally escaped nanomachines), or intentionally unleash destructive nanomachines on the world.
Perhaps this "open source" nanotechnology policy should be enforced. The only way to ensure nobody grabs for power using nanotech is to make sure everyone has it...
The article says POWER4 implements the 64-bit PPC ISA. Does that mean it could run current PPC binaries with no problems? If so, Apple could drop it in to future Macs with nothing more than some changes to the kernel...
Jobs has got to be pretty pissed at Motorola by now. Rumour has it he's shopping around for new chips. I bet AltiVec is the only thing holding him back. AltiVec is truly amazing for certain tasks...
Is there a technical reason why IBM is avoiding AltiVec? Could AltiVec somehow be responsible for the problems Motorola is having boosting PPC clock speed?
Oh, and can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these? Sorry, just had to say it. It would be pretty mind-blowing, wouldn't it?
is that an analog or digital phone?
figures I've seen, indicate digital cell phones can output up to 4X times the range (4watts).
Can you give me a source? From what I've heard, normal digital phones typically produce 0.5 -1 watt. Older analog phones put out more (hence the better battery life with digital). In any case, even if the power output was 4 watts, that's still a lot less than 750 watts (microwave oven).
it would be good if you expanded this idea on prolonged exposure and the heat effects on a specific area of the brain (say just where the tip of the phone is located).
Most of the heating will take place on your scalp and skull. Only a very small amount of radiation will reach your brain. Furthermore, your brain is mostly water, so it takes a lot of energy to heat it up. Finally, blood and fluid is constantly circulating throughout your brain, removing excess heat. If very slight heating effects are carcinogenic, then wouldn't hot water bottles on the head result in brain cancer, too? Funny how nobody is freaking out about them.:-)
Usually when I hear people freak out about cell phones, they're just scared of "radiation", without knowing anything about it. The heating argument is more intelligent, but I would be surprised if the heating effect on brain tissue is significant, and again surprised if slight heating of brain tissue caused cancer.
the classical model is not simply "wrong", retard, it is only less precise than quantum mechanics.
In some circumstances (i.e., the photoelectric effect) the classical model makes predictions that are completely wrong. The classical model predicts that any frequency of "light" should be able to liberate electrons from atoms, and that the frequency should only affect the rate at which electrons are liberated. In contrast, the standard model (i.e. quantum mechanics) predicts that a certain minimum frequency is required to liberate electrons. The classical model also fails completely to explain things like the two-slit interference pattern with single photons...
hmm well this is amusingly moronic. the photoelectric effect says no such thing about current. if it did, radios would not work. the photoelectric effect states photons striking a metal must have sufficiently high individual energy to EJECT AN ELECTRON FROM THE METAL ATOM.
You're partially right here. I should have been more specific--I meant current due to the photoelectric effect. However, radios work by causing already free electrons to move, not by ionizing atoms.
"So, you might ask, how do microwaves cook food?"
no he didnt ask you stupid twat, and he clearly has an understanding of the process if you even bothered to read the whole post.
I know he didn't ask, and yes, I read his post. I said that because I'd seen many other people make the point about microwave ovens, and I wanted to address that.
You appear to have some knowledge of physics, but absolutely none of manners or social skills. Guess that's to be expected from an AC...
Our first man could conclude that he is likely to be the last, however, what are the chances of being one of the first humans?
If there's only ever one human, 100%.
If you take a population that is growing exponentially, and you draw a name out of a hat containing the name of everyone who ever lived, you'll probably pull the name of somebody from a recent generation.
If you know nothing of how the world will end, and don't know how many humans there will be in the course of our existence as a species, a purely statistical analysis of the population won't tell you anything about the lifespan of the human race as a whole (unless, of course, the population is already 0).
If the Doomesday argument was valid, I could note that the number of marbles in existence now is comparable to the total number of marbles ever created, and use that to predict the imminent destruction of marblekind. Doesn't really make much sense, does it?
This argument is obviously crap. The essence of it is that Bayes's is being misapplied. You're dealing with an essentially infinite number of possible "urns", with an unequal chance of selecting each one.
Here are a few examples to demonstrate this:
1) If the first human knew Bayes's theorem (i.e., he was Bayes:-), and applied it in a similar manner, he would conclude that he was probably also one of the last humans.
2) Using the Doomesday Argument, for a population that doubles every generation (i.e. exponential growth), each generation will always contain more individuals than all previous generations combined. Thus, each generation will conclude that it is probably one of the last.
Rather than use the "urn" analogy, a dice analogy would be more appropriate. Imagine that each generation rolls 5 dice. Certain combinations result in extinction (these combinations do not change, but the number of deadly combinations is unknown). You look at the previous record of dice rolls, and see that humanity has not yet been wiped out, but that 40% of all possible combinations have been rolled. The fact that a deadly combination has not yet been rolled makes it less likely that the next roll will be deadly.
This is what happens when you try to use statistics without thinking... As Mark Twain said, "There are lies, damned lies, and then there are statistics." (He was actually quoting Benjamin Disraeli, but whatever.)
Electric or magnetic fields. Instead of the quantum picture of individual photons, consider the classical picture of an electromagnetic wave. A time-varying magnetic field will induce electric currents in a conductive medium.
Buddy, I've got news for you. The classical model is wrong. Albert Einstein won his Nobel Prize for his work on the photoelectric effect. In a nutshell, the photoelectric effect says that the photons striking a metal must have sufficiently high individual energy (read frequency) for there to be any electric current. For some metals, a bright red light will have absolutely no effect, while an extremely dim blue light will produce a current. The threshold frequency depends on the metal. For the record, the frequency (and energy) of visible light is several orders of magnitude higher than that of microwave radiation. I saw a demonstration of the photoelectric effect in my physics class just the other day...
What this means is that microwaves don't have sufficient energy to ionize any molecules you'll find in your brain.
So, you might ask, how do microwaves cook food? The food absorbs the photons, and gains energy, in the form of heat. (The photons are of sufficient energy to excite certain vibrational states of water molecules).
So why is it a bad idea to put your head in a microwave, but OK to use a cellphone? Look at the power output on each. Your microwave is probably about 750 watts, most of which is absorbed by the food. By comparison, your cell phone puts out 0.5 - 1 watt, most of which is not absorbed by your head. Having your head heated at a rate of some small fraction of a watt just isn't significant--the heat will easily be dissipated faster than it can accumulate (exercising probably does a hell of a lot more to heat your brain). Having your head heated at a rate of 750 watts means heat is going into your brain faster than it can leave. There's the difference. I could go into the physics of what happens to pressure when you hold volume constant and increase temperature, but I don't think that's necessary:-) (and your brain isn't an ideal gas, either, but whatever).
This is why I like physics better than biology. Biologists can spend millions of dollars on research trying to figure out whether cell phones cause cancer, and not know the answer. A physicist can sit down for 5 minutes, and give you a more definite answer than you'll ever get from the biologist.
A tax cut stimulates the economy. Why? If you're a fairly high income earner, your marginal tax rate (the rate you pay on each additional dollar) can be very high. So high, in fact, that it may not be worth it to you do work harder/work overtime. If taxes are cut, the disincentives to working harder are decreased, so people work harder.
This, in turn, increases the growth rate of GDP. Now maybe that increase in the growth rate looks insignificant, but remember, we're dealing with exponential growth. 30 years down the road, a very minor increase in GDP growth rate could result in twice as big an economy. I did a few simulations of this with a reasonably simple model to prove it to myself. You should try it, too (even Excel is good enough for a basic simulation). In my simulations, in sometimes took as long as 50 years for it to really pay off, but when it did, it was incredible (exponential growth, baby).
Where do people get this notion that Computer Science == Programming? It doesn't.
That guy with a CS degree who couldn't code worth shit? Well, he may just have been an idiot (they do occasionally manage to get degrees of all sorts through cheating, etc.). Or, he may just be an expert in computer science and NOT programming. Would you know what he was talking about if he asked you to write a version of the quick-select (not quick-sort) algorithm that had a guaranteed worst-case running time of O(n log n)? Maybe, maybe not. You're a programmer, not a computer scientist, so it's not expected of you. Different skill sets...
Hiring people with CS degrees to be code monkeys is generally a waste. Sure, they need a year or two of experience with programming so they know what the hell is going on, but that shouldn't be their goal in life. A lot of people getting CS degrees should really be at a technical college in a two-year certification program in C++ or Java or whatever.
My argument was that it's not worth constantly inventing new technologies, only to abandon them before they become stable. We should stick with older stuff (Java) for a little longer. It's a fairly general rant.
The real question is, how stable will it be? Every software vendor out there is rushing to develop new architectures, technologies, etc., but they don't spend nearly enough time testing. True, garbage collection should improve stability, but that's only if garbage collection is implemented properly. People are likely to just jump on the.NET ship and hope that it will cure all their problems.
When will people realize that there is no silver bullet? More than all these fancy technologies and buzzwords, we need good software engineering and extensive testing. Customers share part of the blame for not shunning companies that produce crappy software. Capitalism only works if customers use their brains.
Here's a quick question for you: How many broken Java applets have you seen? How many have you seen that work perfectly? I almost never see Java applets that work perfectly (may be my JVM, but what good is the cross-platformness of Java if you can only get a working JVM for one platform?). In comparison to.NET, Java is a mature technology, yet it's still not very good. I'd rather see developers put their energy into making Java mature and bug-free, even if.NET is technically superior (not saying that it is).
This is my rant for the day. Yes, good architectures help, but good software engineering and thorough testing will always be most important. Too bad they aren't sexy enough to get the attention they deserve.
Anybody heard of nanotechnology? Another good link is the Foresight Institute. I can see this becoming a reality within my lifetime (ie. much less than 1000 years). If you don't know what I'm talking about, read Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation or Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.
Once we get nanotech, this will all be moot. We'll either wipe ourselves out or become something much more than human. Either way, it should be interesting...
It's a hard job, but someone's got to do it... My karma's already at the 50 cap, so I think I'm qualified. I'm your man.
Signal 11, we salute you!
OK, just so this isn't totally OT, will anybody be enforcing the new TLDs better than the ones we have now? If not, it just means that Time Warner will take timewarner.tv,.kids,.sex,.dot,.biz,.dvd..., instead of just timewarner.com,.net, and.org. Kind of defeats the purpose. Should there be limits on how many domains any one company can own? That would also help do something about those Domain Whores out there.
Maybe I should start a new nickname as the successor to Signal 11. How about Kill -9?
This always has been a great research university. If only the provincial government hadn't backed out of the proposed KAON upgrade to the TRIUMF particle accelerator, we'd have some kick-ass particle physics happening here, too. Oh well, at least we still have the biggest cyclotron around.
Anyway, now that I'm done bragging, I thought I'd post a link to more info about the telescope. Enjoy!
...and I've never received an AOL CD in my life *sob*. I've begged friends to give me theirs, not so that I could actually sign up, but so I wouldn't feel different, but it just isn't the same. I don't know what I've done to deserve this, but I just hope Steve Case is happy.
Apple has been working on a next-generation OS of some sort for TEN YEARS. That's right, ten. Early on, there was Pink/Taligent, then Copland, then Rhapsody, then OS X...
It also pisses me off that my iMac (one of the originals) won't be able to run OS X in any reasonable way. I'm a comp sci student. I can't afford to go out and buy a new G4. If I can't run OS X, I can't develop for it, or learn to develop for it. Apple has probably just lost a developer here...
Finally, the fact that Macs have been stuck at 500 MHz for a year is just pathetic. I know it's Motorola's fault, but still...
On the other hand, my iMac will work for Linux (or maybe even that PPC OpenBSD port that's underway). Hmm.....
I'm sure Apple has its reasons for making the requirements of OS X so high. I think they made the wrong trade-offs. I would much rather have an OS that runs and is stable, than one that does nifty genie effects when I click the pretty buttons.
Why does nobody on Slashdot get it? Border Control isn't to block Americans from using JumpTV. It's to stop JumpTV from getting sued in the US (or at least, losing a lawsuit in the US). If JumpTV can demonstrate that they took reasonable measures to block Americans from using the service, they're homefree legally, and all that Big Media can do is go after American individuals who use the service (which they probably won't do, and may not even be able to do legally).
Is Border Control reasonable? Conceptually, it's a reasonable comprimise between usability and security. Anybody who knows what they're doing can use it, but then, I would hope that the more computer-savvy among us would be using their time more productively than TV. The implementation may suck, but that's probably mostly irrelevant legally (it will probably get fixed up with time).
We're now in a world were companies are forced to take measures they know will be ineffective, in order to satisfy legal requirements. It's not just the law that's moving too slowly (although it scares me even more when it moves too quickly)--society as a whole hasn't adjusted to the net. I can effectively "be" almost anywhere in the world in just a few seconds, at least to the extent that I can be doing things that are subject to the laws of different countries. The result is the vast number of logical inconsistancies and flaws in our social fabric.
The mess with intellectual property is one example. We've created an artificial scarcity of an unlimited resource (information) so that information will fit into traditional markets, which are the most efficient way of allocating scarce resources, but aren't so hot with unlimited resources.
It's funny that watching JumpTV from my place in Canada could be perfectly legal if I'm dialing into a Canadian ISP, but, if I forget to change my settings after a quick trip to the States, I could be committing a crime.
Just as a little tweak to all those Slashdotters south of the 49th parallel, have you noticed the recent trend towards greater 'Net freedom in Canada and less freedom in the US? I totally admire the US Constitution, and wish Canada had something just like it, but your government seems to be ignoring it more and more. By contrast, the Canadian government seems to be fairly with it when it comes to the Net. Here are some examples of Canadian freedom: the ruling that the CRTC (our FTC) can't regulate the 'Net, Ontario's encouraging citizens to use strong crypto, the CSE's Public Key Infrastructure project... The US has DMCA, COPA, COPPA, UCITA, and is also the home of the RIAA, the MPAA... Too bad about our taxes... Oh well, I guess you can always Blame Canada for all those copies of DeCSS hosted up here.:-)
To all the nitpicky karma whores: if you find some minute flaw in my post, please don't flame the hell out of me for it--use your imagination to figure out what I meant, and just read things that way. I am so bloody sick of getting a billion replies because some inconsequential detail of my post was slightly wrong. Show some adaptability. And yes, I know about the Canadian Charter of Rights. Not quite the same as the Constitution. The charter starts by saying "The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."
Tbo's Collary to Hanlon's Razor: Never ascribe to malice that which may be adequately explained by large campaign contributions.
Corporate campaign contributions should be banned. There's nothing inherently wrong with corporations, but allowing them to mix with government is a Very Bad Idea. Just as there is a seperation of church and state, there should also be a seperation of corporate and state.
I've played with Mac OS X DP 2, DP 3, and DP 4, and, unless Apple decided to break a whole lot of stuff for no reason, a lot more than what ZDNet says will work in the Beta. ZDNet reporting really is crap...
Slashdot Mirror
Does democracy fail when the population reaches a critical mass?
Think about the "economics" (in the most general sense" of voting. Carefully considering all the candidates takes a substantial amount of time. Getting to a voting booth and voting takes more time. Your opportunity cost for voting is your time.
What do you gain by voting? A very small chance at influencing an election between two fairly similar candidates. Your effective benefit is the benefit you would gain if you swung the election, times the chance your vote will actually be significant.
As population increases, the power of your vote decreases. At some point, your effective benefit from voting becomes less than your opportunity cost, and it is no longer rational for you to vote.
So should nobody vote? Not necessarily. As less people vote, individual votes become more important. Some people have more to gain from influencing an election (or their time is worth less), so they're more likely to "stick with it" and vote. The result is an equilibrium, where a bunch of people don't vote because it's not worth their time, a bunch more do vote because it is, and a few people are right on the fence...
This suggests that the non-voters could be just as rational as the voters (or perhaps more so)--they just value their time more and their vote less than the voters.
The scary thing is that the people for whom it makes the most sense to vote are those whose time is worthless, or who don't bother to carefully consider the candidates... Explains a lot, doesn't it?
Mathematica doesn't have a dongle... I saw people in my physics class trading around a Mathematica CD just the other day.
Why were they trading it? The physics lab server is slow, and it's inconvenient to walk all the way to the damn physics building do to some work. SSH/X port forwarding is screwed up on that server, and you need special mathematica fonts, so you can't really use it remotely.
If those people couldn't get a pirated copy, they would just have to use the legit versions in the lab. They can't afford to buy Mathematica, and it wouldn't really be worth the cost, anyway. Wolfram Research isn't losing out a bit through them pirating it.
What happens when they graduate? Wolfram now has that much more market share over Maple and its other competitors, thanks to those "pirates". Once they have real jobs in physics or whatever, they'll probably buy Mathematica (or ge the department to buy it).
Do you trust your government with unlimited power? I don't. Hell, I don't even trust myself with unlimited power. If nanotechnology is unevenly distributed, the "haves" will have unlimited power over the "have-nots".
Imagine if the government decided to use nanotech to "rehabilitate" those with "un-American" thinking patterns... Forget Cyberpatrol and NetNanny, you can censor people's minds with nanotech... If one person or group has nanotech, everyone has to have it, or that person or group gains essentially limitless power.
If everyone is capable of looking after their own needs, what role will governments play? Will we need them, or will they cease to be a necessary evil?
Imagine what could happen if one group got way ahead of everybody else in nanotech... They might get cocky and accidentally cause the grey-goo problem (world reduced to goo by accidentally escaped nanomachines), or intentionally unleash destructive nanomachines on the world.
Perhaps this "open source" nanotechnology policy should be enforced. The only way to ensure nobody grabs for power using nanotech is to make sure everyone has it...
The article says POWER4 implements the 64-bit PPC ISA. Does that mean it could run current PPC binaries with no problems? If so, Apple could drop it in to future Macs with nothing more than some changes to the kernel...
Jobs has got to be pretty pissed at Motorola by now. Rumour has it he's shopping around for new chips. I bet AltiVec is the only thing holding him back. AltiVec is truly amazing for certain tasks...
Is there a technical reason why IBM is avoiding AltiVec? Could AltiVec somehow be responsible for the problems Motorola is having boosting PPC clock speed?
Oh, and can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these? Sorry, just had to say it. It would be pretty mind-blowing, wouldn't it?
is that an analog or digital phone?
:-)
figures I've seen, indicate digital cell phones can output up to 4X times the range (4watts).
Can you give me a source? From what I've heard, normal digital phones typically produce 0.5 -1 watt. Older analog phones put out more (hence the better battery life with digital). In any case, even if the power output was 4 watts, that's still a lot less than 750 watts (microwave oven).
it would be good if you expanded this idea on prolonged exposure and the heat effects on a specific area of the brain (say just where the tip of the phone is located).
Most of the heating will take place on your scalp and skull. Only a very small amount of radiation will reach your brain. Furthermore, your brain is mostly water, so it takes a lot of energy to heat it up. Finally, blood and fluid is constantly circulating throughout your brain, removing excess heat. If very slight heating effects are carcinogenic, then wouldn't hot water bottles on the head result in brain cancer, too? Funny how nobody is freaking out about them.
Usually when I hear people freak out about cell phones, they're just scared of "radiation", without knowing anything about it. The heating argument is more intelligent, but I would be surprised if the heating effect on brain tissue is significant, and again surprised if slight heating of brain tissue caused cancer.
the classical model is not simply "wrong", retard, it is only less precise than quantum mechanics.
In some circumstances (i.e., the photoelectric effect) the classical model makes predictions that are completely wrong. The classical model predicts that any frequency of "light" should be able to liberate electrons from atoms, and that the frequency should only affect the rate at which electrons are liberated. In contrast, the standard model (i.e. quantum mechanics) predicts that a certain minimum frequency is required to liberate electrons. The classical model also fails completely to explain things like the two-slit interference pattern with single photons...
hmm well this is amusingly moronic. the photoelectric effect says no such thing about current. if it did, radios would not work. the photoelectric effect states photons striking a metal must have sufficiently high individual energy to EJECT AN ELECTRON FROM THE METAL ATOM.
You're partially right here. I should have been more specific--I meant current due to the photoelectric effect. However, radios work by causing already free electrons to move, not by ionizing atoms.
"So, you might ask, how do microwaves cook food?"
no he didnt ask you stupid twat, and he clearly has an understanding of the process if you even bothered to read the whole post.
I know he didn't ask, and yes, I read his post. I said that because I'd seen many other people make the point about microwave ovens, and I wanted to address that.
You appear to have some knowledge of physics, but absolutely none of manners or social skills. Guess that's to be expected from an AC...
Our first man could conclude that he is likely to be the last, however, what are the chances of being one of the first humans?
If there's only ever one human, 100%.
If you take a population that is growing exponentially, and you draw a name out of a hat containing the name of everyone who ever lived, you'll probably pull the name of somebody from a recent generation.
If you know nothing of how the world will end, and don't know how many humans there will be in the course of our existence as a species, a purely statistical analysis of the population won't tell you anything about the lifespan of the human race as a whole (unless, of course, the population is already 0).
If the Doomesday argument was valid, I could note that the number of marbles in existence now is comparable to the total number of marbles ever created, and use that to predict the imminent destruction of marblekind. Doesn't really make much sense, does it?
This argument is obviously crap. The essence of it is that Bayes's is being misapplied. You're dealing with an essentially infinite number of possible "urns", with an unequal chance of selecting each one.
:-), and applied it in a similar manner, he would conclude that he was probably also one of the last humans.
Here are a few examples to demonstrate this:
1) If the first human knew Bayes's theorem (i.e., he was Bayes
2) Using the Doomesday Argument, for a population that doubles every generation (i.e. exponential growth), each generation will always contain more individuals than all previous generations combined. Thus, each generation will conclude that it is probably one of the last.
Rather than use the "urn" analogy, a dice analogy would be more appropriate. Imagine that each generation rolls 5 dice. Certain combinations result in extinction (these combinations do not change, but the number of deadly combinations is unknown). You look at the previous record of dice rolls, and see that humanity has not yet been wiped out, but that 40% of all possible combinations have been rolled. The fact that a deadly combination has not yet been rolled makes it less likely that the next roll will be deadly.
This is what happens when you try to use statistics without thinking... As Mark Twain said, "There are lies, damned lies, and then there are statistics." (He was actually quoting Benjamin Disraeli, but whatever.)
Electric or magnetic fields. Instead of the quantum picture of individual photons, consider the classical picture of an electromagnetic wave. A time-varying magnetic field will induce electric currents in a conductive medium.
:-) (and your brain isn't an ideal gas, either, but whatever).
Buddy, I've got news for you. The classical model is wrong. Albert Einstein won his Nobel Prize for his work on the photoelectric effect. In a nutshell, the photoelectric effect says that the photons striking a metal must have sufficiently high individual energy (read frequency) for there to be any electric current. For some metals, a bright red light will have absolutely no effect, while an extremely dim blue light will produce a current. The threshold frequency depends on the metal. For the record, the frequency (and energy) of visible light is several orders of magnitude higher than that of microwave radiation. I saw a demonstration of the photoelectric effect in my physics class just the other day...
What this means is that microwaves don't have sufficient energy to ionize any molecules you'll find in your brain.
So, you might ask, how do microwaves cook food? The food absorbs the photons, and gains energy, in the form of heat. (The photons are of sufficient energy to excite certain vibrational states of water molecules).
So why is it a bad idea to put your head in a microwave, but OK to use a cellphone? Look at the power output on each. Your microwave is probably about 750 watts, most of which is absorbed by the food. By comparison, your cell phone puts out 0.5 - 1 watt, most of which is not absorbed by your head. Having your head heated at a rate of some small fraction of a watt just isn't significant--the heat will easily be dissipated faster than it can accumulate (exercising probably does a hell of a lot more to heat your brain). Having your head heated at a rate of 750 watts means heat is going into your brain faster than it can leave. There's the difference. I could go into the physics of what happens to pressure when you hold volume constant and increase temperature, but I don't think that's necessary
This is why I like physics better than biology. Biologists can spend millions of dollars on research trying to figure out whether cell phones cause cancer, and not know the answer. A physicist can sit down for 5 minutes, and give you a more definite answer than you'll ever get from the biologist.
A tax cut stimulates the economy. Why? If you're a fairly high income earner, your marginal tax rate (the rate you pay on each additional dollar) can be very high. So high, in fact, that it may not be worth it to you do work harder/work overtime. If taxes are cut, the disincentives to working harder are decreased, so people work harder.
This, in turn, increases the growth rate of GDP. Now maybe that increase in the growth rate looks insignificant, but remember, we're dealing with exponential growth. 30 years down the road, a very minor increase in GDP growth rate could result in twice as big an economy. I did a few simulations of this with a reasonably simple model to prove it to myself. You should try it, too (even Excel is good enough for a basic simulation). In my simulations, in sometimes took as long as 50 years for it to really pay off, but when it did, it was incredible (exponential growth, baby).
That's the argument behind a tax cut...
Where do people get this notion that Computer Science == Programming? It doesn't.
That guy with a CS degree who couldn't code worth shit? Well, he may just have been an idiot (they do occasionally manage to get degrees of all sorts through cheating, etc.). Or, he may just be an expert in computer science and NOT programming. Would you know what he was talking about if he asked you to write a version of the quick-select (not quick-sort) algorithm that had a guaranteed worst-case running time of O(n log n)? Maybe, maybe not. You're a programmer, not a computer scientist, so it's not expected of you. Different skill sets...
Hiring people with CS degrees to be code monkeys is generally a waste. Sure, they need a year or two of experience with programming so they know what the hell is going on, but that shouldn't be their goal in life. A lot of people getting CS degrees should really be at a technical college in a two-year certification program in C++ or Java or whatever.
CueCat XOR encryption. Can they crack that?!?! Ha!
Shit, somebody beat me to it while I was composing my post. Now I'm off-topic AND redundant (and not that funny)... Damn, down to 48 karma.
Al Gore invented Open Source with his open-source campaign website. I think it happened shortly after he invented the internet...
Yes, yes it was.
That's why I called it my rant for the day.
My argument was that it's not worth constantly inventing new technologies, only to abandon them before they become stable. We should stick with older stuff (Java) for a little longer. It's a fairly general rant.
The real question is, how stable will it be? Every software vendor out there is rushing to develop new architectures, technologies, etc., but they don't spend nearly enough time testing. True, garbage collection should improve stability, but that's only if garbage collection is implemented properly. People are likely to just jump on the .NET ship and hope that it will cure all their problems.
.NET, Java is a mature technology, yet it's still not very good. I'd rather see developers put their energy into making Java mature and bug-free, even if .NET is technically superior (not saying that it is).
When will people realize that there is no silver bullet? More than all these fancy technologies and buzzwords, we need good software engineering and extensive testing. Customers share part of the blame for not shunning companies that produce crappy software. Capitalism only works if customers use their brains.
Here's a quick question for you: How many broken Java applets have you seen? How many have you seen that work perfectly? I almost never see Java applets that work perfectly (may be my JVM, but what good is the cross-platformness of Java if you can only get a working JVM for one platform?). In comparison to
This is my rant for the day. Yes, good architectures help, but good software engineering and thorough testing will always be most important. Too bad they aren't sexy enough to get the attention they deserve.
Anybody heard of nanotechnology? Another good link is the Foresight Institute. I can see this becoming a reality within my lifetime (ie. much less than 1000 years). If you don't know what I'm talking about, read Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation or Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.
Once we get nanotech, this will all be moot. We'll either wipe ourselves out or become something much more than human. Either way, it should be interesting...
It's a hard job, but someone's got to do it... My karma's already at the 50 cap, so I think I'm qualified. I'm your man.
.kids, .sex, .dot, .biz, .dvd..., instead of just timewarner.com, .net, and .org. Kind of defeats the purpose. Should there be limits on how many domains any one company can own? That would also help do something about those Domain Whores out there.
Signal 11, we salute you!
OK, just so this isn't totally OT, will anybody be enforcing the new TLDs better than the ones we have now? If not, it just means that Time Warner will take timewarner.tv,
Maybe I should start a new nickname as the successor to Signal 11. How about Kill -9?
...at UBC...
This always has been a great research university. If only the provincial government hadn't backed out of the proposed KAON upgrade to the TRIUMF particle accelerator, we'd have some kick-ass particle physics happening here, too. Oh well, at least we still have the biggest cyclotron around.
Anyway, now that I'm done bragging, I thought I'd post a link to more info about the telescope. Enjoy!
...and I've never received an AOL CD in my life *sob*. I've begged friends to give me theirs, not so that I could actually sign up, but so I wouldn't feel different, but it just isn't the same. I don't know what I've done to deserve this, but I just hope Steve Case is happy.
Apple has been working on a next-generation OS of some sort for TEN YEARS. That's right, ten. Early on, there was Pink/Taligent, then Copland, then Rhapsody, then OS X...
It also pisses me off that my iMac (one of the originals) won't be able to run OS X in any reasonable way. I'm a comp sci student. I can't afford to go out and buy a new G4. If I can't run OS X, I can't develop for it, or learn to develop for it. Apple has probably just lost a developer here...
Finally, the fact that Macs have been stuck at 500 MHz for a year is just pathetic. I know it's Motorola's fault, but still...
On the other hand, my iMac will work for Linux (or maybe even that PPC OpenBSD port that's underway). Hmm.....
I'm sure Apple has its reasons for making the requirements of OS X so high. I think they made the wrong trade-offs. I would much rather have an OS that runs and is stable, than one that does nifty genie effects when I click the pretty buttons.
Why does nobody on Slashdot get it? Border Control isn't to block Americans from using JumpTV. It's to stop JumpTV from getting sued in the US (or at least, losing a lawsuit in the US). If JumpTV can demonstrate that they took reasonable measures to block Americans from using the service, they're homefree legally, and all that Big Media can do is go after American individuals who use the service (which they probably won't do, and may not even be able to do legally).
:-)
Is Border Control reasonable? Conceptually, it's a reasonable comprimise between usability and security. Anybody who knows what they're doing can use it, but then, I would hope that the more computer-savvy among us would be using their time more productively than TV. The implementation may suck, but that's probably mostly irrelevant legally (it will probably get fixed up with time).
We're now in a world were companies are forced to take measures they know will be ineffective, in order to satisfy legal requirements. It's not just the law that's moving too slowly (although it scares me even more when it moves too quickly)--society as a whole hasn't adjusted to the net. I can effectively "be" almost anywhere in the world in just a few seconds, at least to the extent that I can be doing things that are subject to the laws of different countries. The result is the vast number of logical inconsistancies and flaws in our social fabric.
The mess with intellectual property is one example. We've created an artificial scarcity of an unlimited resource (information) so that information will fit into traditional markets, which are the most efficient way of allocating scarce resources, but aren't so hot with unlimited resources.
It's funny that watching JumpTV from my place in Canada could be perfectly legal if I'm dialing into a Canadian ISP, but, if I forget to change my settings after a quick trip to the States, I could be committing a crime.
Just as a little tweak to all those Slashdotters south of the 49th parallel, have you noticed the recent trend towards greater 'Net freedom in Canada and less freedom in the US? I totally admire the US Constitution, and wish Canada had something just like it, but your government seems to be ignoring it more and more. By contrast, the Canadian government seems to be fairly with it when it comes to the Net. Here are some examples of Canadian freedom: the ruling that the CRTC (our FTC) can't regulate the 'Net, Ontario's encouraging citizens to use strong crypto, the CSE's Public Key Infrastructure project... The US has DMCA, COPA, COPPA, UCITA, and is also the home of the RIAA, the MPAA... Too bad about our taxes... Oh well, I guess you can always Blame Canada for all those copies of DeCSS hosted up here.
To all the nitpicky karma whores: if you find some minute flaw in my post, please don't flame the hell out of me for it--use your imagination to figure out what I meant, and just read things that way. I am so bloody sick of getting a billion replies because some inconsequential detail of my post was slightly wrong. Show some adaptability. And yes, I know about the Canadian Charter of Rights. Not quite the same as the Constitution. The charter starts by saying "The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."
Tbo's Collary to Hanlon's Razor:
Never ascribe to malice that which may be adequately explained by large campaign contributions.
Corporate campaign contributions should be banned. There's nothing inherently wrong with corporations, but allowing them to mix with government is a Very Bad Idea. Just as there is a seperation of church and state, there should also be a seperation of corporate and state.
I'll second this.
I've played with Mac OS X DP 2, DP 3, and DP 4, and, unless Apple decided to break a whole lot of stuff for no reason, a lot more than what ZDNet says will work in the Beta. ZDNet reporting really is crap...