Every year, in every field, we answer more and more questions. However, every answer raises many more questions. We are still exploring our ignorance, but we know more about it every day. What are you doing to help?
Assuming a 100W lighbulb, 300,000,000 people in the US, and electricity at $0.08 a KW/h, that saves us $20,000. What are you planning to feed this kid?
Whether the particles fell back in would depend on their initial velocity and on the total charge of the sun.
Absolutely. However, the only force currently causing them to accelerate towards the sun (that is, slow down) is gravity. If there were a net charge between the sun and the solar wind, there would also be an electromagnetic effect. This would be many orders of magnitude greater than the gravitational component. Observation of the solar wind shows that this is not the case. (If it were the case, there would be no solar wind).
Agreed. Lisp is really easy to parse. But an algol-style language is easier to parse than one that needs LALR(1) parsing. But that's easier than....(on to natural languages). And algol can be fully parsed by RDP.
So why are XML parsers so bloody slow? It's only a tree of sexps.
If you want to build your first compiler, Pascal-style languages are a good place to start. They are amenable to recursive descent parsing.
I strongly recommend Jack Crenshaw's (free) introduction.
I seem to remember that the compiler is written in Pascal. I translated it to C as a I went along. You could always use GNU Pascal (That's a google link, because the site seems to be refusing connections. Could that be related to this FPP?)
About 1991, a (rich) friend of mine was having some trouble with his nearly new ZZR1100. The dealership had told him that the flat spot in the power curve was in his imagination. So he asked me to look at it.
Here's a guy, university undergrad, with enough money to buy a hot superbike, but without the basic ability to frob on his own bike. So he asks ME, an astronomer, to look at it.
I do, of course. If only to get a "test ride". 150 miles later, I actually agree with him. It's got a flat spot. It feels like a dodgy spark plug. Probably too big a gap. Easily fixed. How long can it take?
So, I get hold of a workshop manual. I look up "Sparkplugs, and the changing thereof". The first task is a peach.
To access the front of the cylinder head, begin by removing the rear light cluster. Special tools are required.
Maybe I haven't looked hard enough, but I can't seem to find a paper submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, and there's nothing on the pre-print servers.
When scientists are sure of their data, the first thing they do does not involve a press release. I'll be more convinced once I've seen it in a reputable journal
Here's a rant by a JPL guy about appropriate technologies for software on deep space probes. He recounts one story of a failed probe "100 million dollars, and 100 million miles away".
They fixed it. The fact there was a lisp REPL running on the spacecraft helped.
It's about cost, reliability and payload. {Note - this goes off-topic because I googled a bit and was stunned by modern launch capability. Sorry}
A Space Shuttle can throw about thirteen tonnes into low earth orbit. That's a huge chunk of satellite. Unfortunately, NASA will charge you in excess of $500 million for the service. The reliability is excellent. One failure in over 110 launches. Probably the most reliable launcher in history. Use the Space Shuttle if it's very heavy, cost is no problem and it absolutely, certainly, definitely must get there.
Delta is an old, proven, excellent technology. It used to be considered a 'light' launcher. Delta IV, however, can smack a meaty Thirteen tonnes to orbit. Yowza. I only found that out now. OK, that vehicle hasn't been built yet.
Whoo-Hoo! I just read that page again. The Delta Heavy (not built yet, but all technology in place) can stuff 13 tonnes into Geosynchronous transfer orbit. It can throw (and this is astonishing) twenty-three humungous tonnes to low earth orbit. What the hell can compete with that?
Well, Ariane 5 ECS-B can do twelve tonnes to Geosynchronous orbit. No payload assist required for orbit transfer.
The Russian Proton can do about 23 tonnes to low earth orbit. This is the only one I know the cost for. You want twenty-three thousand kilogrammes orbiting at 350 kilometers? 75 million dollars. Cash up front, go talk to your insurers. (The Proton is almost as insanely reliable as the shuttle, actually - certainly comparable with Delta)
Right. That's it. I'm going to become a rocket engineer. It's got to beat the hell out of managing telecoms networks for a living.
(Completely agree with parent post, minor correction, then rant)
MRSA actually means Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus.
Now we have VRSA. Vancomycin Resistant Staphyloccocus Aureus.
There are no "wonder drugs" in the pipeline. We're reaching the end of the road for antibiotics. It won't be sudden, but it will happen.
Many diseases we currently think of as relatively trivial are going to become real killers again. Millions of people are going to die.
It won't be the young, fit and healthy as much as the very young and the very old.
But let's keep feeding the antibiotics to farm animals. It makes them more profitable. Got a slight viral cold? Demand antibiotics. It's your right.
It's the tragedy of the commons again.
Crazy question for microbiologists: Is it possible that resistance to a specific antibiotic costs an organism enough that it could no longer out-compete it's non-resistant cousins? Would it be worth infecting someone who has a resistant strain with a non-resistant strain in the hope that the non-resistant one will 'win'? Then, (if the patient still lives), treat that with antibiotics?
Or are you going to get so much genetic transfer that it's worse than dangerous?
Enter hostname and IP address [NON DHCP SYSTEMS ONLY]
Done.
If it's harder than that, get a better operating system.
I know some Linux distros aren't there yet, but some are (stand up Suse and Red Hat).
OS/400 has been like this for over twenty years (except the IP stuff - LU6.2, SNA, oh the memories)
Solaris is just like that.
Installation is a difficult, but solved problem. Before you start whinging about different device drivers, incompatible IRQs, horizontal sync rates and other inanities, ask yourself why IBM, Sun, HP, Microsoft et al. have solved the problem.
If you want real geek cred, make the hurd work, or add an optimisation to gcc. Or, possibly, build an installer for Linux. Working through a difficult install is a waste of everybody's time.
Every truly faithful person knows that God was trying to create wine, and that when the perfect wine is created, God will drink it, be satisfied, and the universe will end.
However, as scripture teaches us, God's kid brother, Satan, was goofing around with early yeast prototypes while God wasn't looking and accidentally created beer.
The problem with beer is that it takes less time to brew than wine. This led to a problem. The finest vine-growing areas on the planet are in Australia and South Africa. Satan tempted the fine people of these areas with beer. The results are well-documented. Wine production has been delayed by centuries.
For the True Rapture to take place, Australians and South Africans must be kept away from beer long enough for them to get the wine right. They are so close to perfection.
That's why the truly religious mission is so hard. I have chosen to follow the One True Path.
I'm ridding the world of beer, one pint at a time.
Bruce is right. This is snake oil. Flummery. Rubbish.Tosh. Garbage. Bollocks.
Unfortunately, some of the things Bruce has stated are not entirely accurate. The general facts are correct. but some bits need modification.
Hydrogen is reactive. It's only 'highly' reactive if you haven't played with really reactive stuff, like fluorine, chlorine and, er, oxygen. Potasium is fun too.. (I have only seen Cesium once. That's quite enough).
Skin only catches fire if you get it very hot. An uncontrolled fire in a pure oxygen atmosphere is more likely to vaporize the skin; then the fat underneath will start to burn. Pure oxygen at reasonable (3atm) pressure will not cause spontaneous combustion of people. But if a fire starts in that environment, then you won't be able to put it out. The fire in Apollo 1 was not spontaneous. It was started by an electrical fault. The three astronauts suffocated in flame. Not nice.
You can happily mix hydrogen and oxygen in a 2:1 ratio. You can pressurize the mixture to astonishing levels. If there's a lot less oxygen, you can breathe the mixture for days at a time (google for "deep hydrogen diving"). If you make a spark, then you'll understand just how reactive oxygen is. The lesson learnt will be very short, and terminally instructive.
But hydrogen and oxygen are not hypergolic. Ask a rocket scientist. Even the Space Shuttle needs a match to get it going.
Sodium is a disinfectant. In the same way that a raging forest fire is disinfectant. Kids! treating your grazed knees with sodium metal may sting! Also, your parent's lawyers will have to contend with a stupidity counter-claim.
Oxidizing agents and reducing agents are defined by their ability to grab or release electrons.
If you want to understand this stuff, find somebody who knows what "Gibb's free energy" is about. Then, get them to explain it to me...
And, obviously, because you said that, you are not a fool. That's nice.
Obviously, you're too busy to post a response to this, since you're the only non-fool on the planet.
As such, your income from your inventions must be measured in billions a year.
Merely juggling the millions around must take hours every week.
Inventing new things must take up the rest of your time. However, if you can spare a moment, could you tell me how to stop posting asinine and insulting comments on Slashdot?
It is my dream that you will find time to read this comment. If you do, I shall know that I have communicated with a truly superior person.
Ignoring the obligatory "Magic Smoke" jokes, I'm wondering whether they eat the pizza. Benzpyrenes, dioxins, polychlorinated aromatics. These all have a negative effect on flavour.
Fact #1: Bohr and Heisenberg were there when quantum physics was being born. Both contributed greatly to it's discovery.
Fact #2: The Nazis never had the ability to fight and build a nuke after the astonishing raid against the heavy water plant in Norway. In 1941, they had lost the Battle of Britain, were losing the capability to launch an invasion of Britain, and were focussing a lot of effort on the Battle of the Atlantic.
<interlude >
(which they would have won until American long-range bombers(B29s) became available in large numbers - The courage and acheivements of the British Royal and Merchant navies should not be forgotten, but it was the closing of the Iceland-UK gap by airpower that won the Battle of the Atlantic. Thankyou once again America.)
</interlude >
It's all ancient history. But please give respect to the British-trained Norwegians who perpetrated the astonishing raid that ended Nazi nuclear capabilities.
More information:here Basically, they landed by parachute in Norway, infiltrated one of the most highly defended places in Nazi-controlled Europe, and set of some charges. The charges were placed next to some fat cables deep in a long tunnel. The cables were carrying enough current (many tens of thousands of amps) that the electromagnetic effects when they shorted blew a kilometer of tunnel to bits.
Another team sank a ship carrying 1000 tons of heavy water from Norway to Germany.
After those losses, the German nuke program didn't have chance.
<googlefailure>>
Google (and AltaVista) have failed to give many useful hits on these events. The people who executed these raids deserve more web presence. Please post links.
</googlefailure>>
That's a neat idea. It's been done before, though. All you are doing is getting a machine to generate submissions to a human-edited queue. When I say *all you are doing*, I don't mean to disparage the idea. It's neat. You could certainly get rich if you have $25,000 for a patent application
We could use a distributed network of human brains to do the submissions, of course. The AI you are suggesting probably won't do well against them. AIs are bad at humour. That one, you can't patent anyway. here, there and here again are clear examples of prior art.
However, the key point of the Google competition is obvious. They're bypassing the recruitment agents. Google are going to have to sift through a small number of attempts. I doubt they'll get 500 entries that need a human to look at them. Maybe 100 of them will come from really clever people. Google will try to hire them. Maybe they'll get 25. Each of those people would have cost around $30,000 to hire through the usual channels. Who wins here? The only losers are the employment agencies.
I have a bunch of ideas to try. Unfortunately, my employment contract forbids me from entering. (although this is interesting enough to ask for a variation in my contract....)
Slashdot Mirror
A quick search on arxiv.org for 'International Space Station' yields four papers.
For comparison, a search for 'Hubble Space Telescope' gives over 200 papers.
Not a definitive result, but it seems to indicate that there's not much science being done anyway.
but Sean Carroll is. And he's not convinced.
Assuming a 100W lighbulb, 300,000,000 people in the US, and electricity at $0.08 a KW/h, that saves us $20,000. What are you planning to feed this kid?
Absolutely. However, the only force currently causing them to accelerate towards the sun (that is, slow down) is gravity. If there were a net charge between the sun and the solar wind, there would also be an electromagnetic effect. This would be many orders of magnitude greater than the gravitational component. Observation of the solar wind shows that this is not the case. (If it were the case, there would be no solar wind).
Incidentally, a less maths-heavy link is here
No. There's no net charge. If one developed between the sun and the solar wind, the solar wind would fall straight back in.
A good primer on dark energy can be found here
Agree. See subcomment here
But a compiler that targets this
LISP is easy iff the hardware has a stack.
(I think I want that on a Tshirt)
Agreed. Lisp is really easy to parse. But an algol-style language is easier to parse than one that needs LALR(1) parsing. But that's easier than....(on to natural languages). And algol can be fully parsed by RDP.
So why are XML parsers so bloody slow? It's only a tree of sexps.
If you want to build your first compiler, Pascal-style languages are a good place to start. They are amenable to recursive descent parsing.
I strongly recommend Jack Crenshaw's (free) introduction.
I seem to remember that the compiler is written in Pascal. I translated it to C as a I went along. You could always use GNU Pascal (That's a google link, because the site seems to be refusing connections. Could that be related to this FPP?)
Here's a guy, university undergrad, with enough money to buy a hot superbike, but without the basic ability to frob on his own bike. So he asks ME, an astronomer, to look at it.
I do, of course. If only to get a "test ride". 150 miles later, I actually agree with him. It's got a flat spot. It feels like a dodgy spark plug. Probably too big a gap. Easily fixed. How long can it take?
So, I get hold of a workshop manual. I look up "Sparkplugs, and the changing thereof". The first task is a peach.
To access the front of the cylinder head, begin by removing the rear light cluster. Special tools are required.
I politely declined the task.
Well, a fully amateur satellite effort, anyway. Here.
When scientists are sure of their data, the first thing they do does not involve a press release. I'll be more convinced once I've seen it in a reputable journal
Here's a rant by a JPL guy about appropriate technologies for software on deep space probes. He recounts one story of a failed probe "100 million dollars, and 100 million miles away".
They fixed it. The fact there was a lisp REPL running on the spacecraft helped.
That's cool:
(unwind-protect
(progn (do-science)(talk-to-earth))
(wait-in-repl-for-earth))
You mean something like this?
It's about cost, reliability and payload.
{Note - this goes off-topic because I googled a bit and was stunned by modern launch capability. Sorry}
A Space Shuttle can throw about thirteen tonnes into low earth orbit. That's a huge chunk of satellite. Unfortunately, NASA will charge you in excess of $500 million for the service. The reliability is excellent. One failure in over 110 launches. Probably the most reliable launcher in history. Use the Space Shuttle if it's very heavy, cost is no problem and it absolutely, certainly, definitely must get there.
Delta is an old, proven, excellent technology. It used to be considered a 'light' launcher. Delta IV, however, can smack a meaty Thirteen tonnes to orbit. Yowza. I only found that out now. OK, that vehicle hasn't been built yet.
Whoo-Hoo! I just read that page again. The Delta Heavy (not built yet, but all technology in place) can stuff 13 tonnes into Geosynchronous transfer orbit. It can throw (and this is astonishing) twenty-three humungous tonnes to low earth orbit. What the hell can compete with that?
Well, Ariane 5 ECS-B can do twelve tonnes to Geosynchronous orbit. No payload assist required for orbit transfer.
The Russian Proton
can do about 23 tonnes to low earth orbit. This is the only one I know the cost for. You want twenty-three thousand kilogrammes orbiting at 350 kilometers? 75 million dollars. Cash up front, go talk to your insurers. (The Proton is almost as insanely reliable as the shuttle, actually - certainly comparable with Delta)
Right. That's it. I'm going to become a rocket engineer. It's got to beat the hell out of managing telecoms networks for a living.
(Completely agree with parent post, minor correction, then rant)
MRSA actually means Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus.
Now we have VRSA. Vancomycin Resistant Staphyloccocus Aureus.
There are no "wonder drugs" in the pipeline. We're reaching the end of the road for antibiotics. It won't be sudden, but it will happen.
Many diseases we currently think of as relatively trivial are going to become real killers again. Millions of people are going to die.
It won't be the young, fit and healthy as much as the very young and the very old.
But let's keep feeding the antibiotics to farm animals. It makes them more profitable. Got a slight viral cold? Demand antibiotics. It's your right.
It's the tragedy of the commons again.
Crazy question for microbiologists: Is it possible that resistance to a specific antibiotic costs an organism enough that it could no longer out-compete it's non-resistant cousins? Would it be worth infecting someone who has a resistant strain with a non-resistant strain in the hope that the non-resistant one will 'win'? Then, (if the patient still lives), treat that with antibiotics?
Or are you going to get so much genetic transfer that it's worse than dangerous?
Timezone - yes. Or get it to look for an NTP server.
Root password - Whoops. Should have thought of that.
locale - Yup.
Keyboard layout should be possible from a hardware probe + locale settings.
My main point is that it shouldn't need a fifteen-page installation guide. So many things described are inherently automatable.
Insert media
Boot
Enter hostname and IP address [NON DHCP SYSTEMS ONLY]
Done.
If it's harder than that, get a better operating system.
I know some Linux distros aren't there yet, but some are (stand up Suse and Red Hat).
OS/400 has been like this for over twenty years (except the IP stuff - LU6.2, SNA, oh the memories)
Solaris is just like that.
Installation is a difficult, but solved problem. Before you start whinging about different device drivers, incompatible IRQs, horizontal sync rates and other inanities, ask yourself why IBM, Sun, HP, Microsoft et al. have solved the problem.
If you want real geek cred, make the hurd work, or add an optimisation to gcc. Or, possibly, build an installer for Linux. Working through a difficult install is a waste of everybody's time.
Thank you and good night.
However, as scripture teaches us, God's kid brother, Satan, was goofing around with early yeast prototypes while God wasn't looking and accidentally created beer.
The problem with beer is that it takes less time to brew than wine. This led to a problem. The finest vine-growing areas on the planet are in Australia and South Africa. Satan tempted the fine people of these areas with beer. The results are well-documented. Wine production has been delayed by centuries.
For the True Rapture to take place, Australians and South Africans must be kept away from beer long enough for them to get the wine right. They are so close to perfection.
That's why the truly religious mission is so hard. I have chosen to follow the One True Path.
I'm ridding the world of beer, one pint at a time.
Unfortunately, some of the things Bruce has stated are not entirely accurate. The general facts are correct. but some bits need modification.
Hydrogen is reactive. It's only 'highly' reactive if you haven't played with really reactive stuff, like fluorine, chlorine and, er, oxygen. Potasium is fun too.. (I have only seen Cesium once. That's quite enough).
Skin only catches fire if you get it very hot. An uncontrolled fire in a pure oxygen atmosphere is more likely to vaporize the skin; then the fat underneath will start to burn. Pure oxygen at reasonable (3atm) pressure will not cause spontaneous combustion of people. But if a fire starts in that environment, then you won't be able to put it out. The fire in Apollo 1 was not spontaneous. It was started by an electrical fault. The three astronauts suffocated in flame. Not nice.
You can happily mix hydrogen and oxygen in a 2:1 ratio. You can pressurize the mixture to astonishing levels. If there's a lot less oxygen, you can breathe the mixture for days at a time (google for "deep hydrogen diving"). If you make a spark, then you'll understand just how reactive oxygen is. The lesson learnt will be very short, and terminally instructive.
But hydrogen and oxygen are not hypergolic. Ask a rocket scientist. Even the Space Shuttle needs a match to get it going.
Sodium is a disinfectant. In the same way that a raging forest fire is disinfectant. Kids! treating your grazed knees with sodium metal may sting! Also, your parent's lawyers will have to contend with a stupidity counter-claim.
Oxidizing agents and reducing agents are defined by their ability to grab or release electrons.
If you want to understand this stuff, find somebody who knows what "Gibb's free energy" is about. Then, get them to explain it to me...
And, obviously, because you said that, you are not a fool. That's nice.
Obviously, you're too busy to post a response to this, since you're the only non-fool on the planet.
As such, your income from your inventions must be measured in billions a year.
Merely juggling the millions around must take hours every week.
Inventing new things must take up the rest of your time. However, if you can spare a moment, could you tell me how to stop posting asinine and insulting comments on Slashdot?
It is my dream that you will find time to read this comment. If you do, I shall know that I have communicated with a truly superior person.
Foolishly yours,
ChazR
Ihe Invisible Pink Unicorn commands me (*I am but a humble believer*) To send best wishes to Rob and Kathleen.
The Invisible Pink Unicorn (*may her incompetence at spotting Pascal comments ever increase*)
May Your Tribe Increase!
Never let the Purple Oyster of Doom sully your happiness.
Ignoring the obligatory "Magic Smoke" jokes, I'm wondering whether they eat the pizza. Benzpyrenes, dioxins, polychlorinated aromatics. These all have a negative effect on flavour.
Also, was it a Religiously acceptable pizza?
Fact #1: Bohr and Heisenberg were there when quantum physics was being born. Both contributed greatly to it's discovery.
Fact #2: The Nazis never had the ability to fight and build a nuke after the astonishing raid against the heavy water plant in Norway. In 1941, they had lost the Battle of Britain, were losing the capability to launch an invasion of Britain, and were focussing a lot of effort on the Battle of the Atlantic.
<interlude >
(which they would have won until American long-range bombers(B29s) became available in large numbers - The courage and acheivements of the British Royal and Merchant navies should not be forgotten, but it was the closing of the Iceland-UK gap by airpower that won the Battle of the Atlantic. Thankyou once again America.)
</interlude >
It's all ancient history. But please give respect to the British-trained Norwegians who perpetrated the astonishing raid that ended Nazi nuclear capabilities.
More information:here
Basically, they landed by parachute in Norway, infiltrated one of the most highly defended places in Nazi-controlled Europe, and set of some charges. The charges were placed next to some fat cables deep in a long tunnel. The cables were carrying enough current (many tens of thousands of amps) that the electromagnetic effects when they shorted blew a kilometer of tunnel to bits.
Another team sank a ship carrying 1000 tons of heavy water from Norway to Germany.
After those losses, the German nuke program didn't have chance.
<googlefailure>>
Google (and AltaVista) have failed to give many useful hits on these events. The people who executed these raids deserve more web presence. Please post links.
</googlefailure>>
That's a neat idea. It's been done before, though. All you are doing is getting a machine to generate submissions to a human-edited queue. When I say *all you are doing*, I don't mean to disparage the idea. It's neat. You could certainly get rich if you have $25,000 for a patent application
We could use a distributed network of human brains to do the submissions, of course. The AI you are suggesting probably won't do well against them. AIs are bad at humour. That one, you can't patent anyway. here, there and here again are clear examples of prior art.
However, the key point of the Google competition is obvious. They're bypassing the recruitment agents. Google are going to have to sift through a small number of attempts. I doubt they'll get 500 entries that need a human to look at them. Maybe 100 of them will come from really clever people. Google will try to hire them. Maybe they'll get 25. Each of those people would have cost around $30,000 to hire through the usual channels. Who wins here? The only losers are the employment agencies.
I have a bunch of ideas to try. Unfortunately, my employment contract forbids me from entering. (although this is interesting enough to ask for a variation in my contract....)