In the scale of the universe history, 700 years is a very short time. Do you think that pacifist aliens wouldn't have developed rocketry over, say, 7000 years? or even 70,000 years? Without any wars, there would be no particular reason for the aliens not to just be patient and develop slowly. Even it took a million years to do what we've done in the last 1000, it wouldn't matter at all. For a sense of scale, it's been 60 million years since the dinosaurs.
For a violant race, however, time does matter because of the risk of killing ourselves off.
Did you miss the part about the efficiency drastically dropping with time as it gets damaged? It's only going to be reflecting 90% of incoming energy for the first few nanoseconds.
Can you please give me a reference to such mirrors? I work with lasers and I'd love to get hold of a perfect mirror.
If you can find mirrors which are even 99.99% perfect I'd be extremely impressed. It's just not possible.
For a start, the wavelength of laser light is never truly monochromatic - it has a width. That width is going to put fundamental limits on the diffraction efficiency.
Same thing about the memory applies to CPU. I often need to valgrind my programs (basically run them on a 'virtual CPU' - it lets you detect memory leaks, bad pointers etc). Doing so requires a pretty powerful CPU though. It's not fun doing that on an 'average' cpu.
Except they'll hold the button down too long and end up dragging and fail to click. They won't retry or even realise it didn't work, but simply get confused by the next instruction.
I too work with lasers. And I can attest to the beam going places you don't intend it to - I once nearly blinded myself with a pulse laser:( I was blind for about half a day, and had to have an injection in my eye. Gotta be careful.
Actually that's not quite true - photons can bounce off each other. It's just rare.
On a different note, what you can do is have the beams have enough energy density to be close to breaking down the air. Then where they intersect there will be enough energy to break down the air and create a plasma. This will be a reflective point. It's kinda loud though.
You seem to have this wrong idea of 3rd world countries. Of course farmers are buying seed - they need to compete against the global market.
> Well, if you are poor, you're likely to get your seed from saving from the last season's crop. No, you most likely to do whatever is required to produce as much crop as possible. That's not done by using what you saved from last season's crop. It's done by buying seed.
> And if you're going to buy it, you would buy it locally, not buy it from America. Says who? A large amount of imports and exports from 3rd world countries are for seeds. I studied an interesting case of 2 countries that imported and exported huge amounts of potatoes between them. One country exported a lot of seed potatoes, and the other country imported the seed potatoes and grew them and exported the crop potatoes. The first country then imported the crop potatoes.
It's not always (or even usually) optimal to buy seeds locally. Chances are that some other country can produce them cheaper than your local suppliers.
> And it's implied by your argument that they weren't buying the seed in the first place, as you claim the extra demand will cause the seed companies to go out of business. If they were already buying it, why would demand go up?
The point I was trying to make was that there are companies (and whole countries) in 3rd world countries who make a living off of selling seeds. If america buys seeds from american farmers and then gives them to poor farmers (which is what usually happens), then it means that the farmers are not buying seeds from the seed-selling companies. This means that the seed-selling companies (and countries) cannot compete.
It is a serious problem. My wife's PhD is on this topic - the effectiveness of aid. Aid is not a simple problem like most people assume.
> Companies that sell seed will go out of business just because we give a few bags to starving countries? It's a lot more than 'a few bags' - it can make a significant impact in the targeted areas.
> The starving countries were never paying for seed in the first place, so how would they lose profits because of this? What on earth makes you think this? Are you just making it up now as you go along? At least argue with facts instead of what you pulled out of your arse.
> Just a thought - instead of sending $200 worth of bagged (ready to cook / eat) rice per child, send $200 worth of whatever kind of crop seed would grow where they live and teach them to grow it.
And then you harm the companies that sell seed. Meaning that they go out of business and so now the country doesn't have any companies that can sell seed for the next year.
Oh, and btw, most people in 3rd world countries ARE NOT STARVING.
Thanks for the reply - I had sort of assumed that the Sage developers were not interested in doing that. I'm very happy to hear that people are working on it:)
Sage is interesting and has been around a while, but it isn't packaged by distros - probably because it requires lots of other programs (maxima etc) but modifies them all slightly.
Well in your original post you said you really don't know if you'll vaccinate your children, and that you wouldn't if your wife didn't like vaccinations.
I don't think complaining is completely useless. It lets people know that Microsoft is playing dirty, and hopefully results on putting pressure on Microsoft. MS have had to change various things because of people complaining - granted not as much as I'd like though.
I hope to see more pressure put on MS to follow the standards. It's an advantage to everyone (well, except MS of course). That pressure has to come from enough people complaining and actively not supporting IE etc.
(and FWIW, I am a kde developer - I am doing what I can about it)
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Couldn't the same be argued for, say, vibrators?
In the scale of the universe history, 700 years is a very short time. Do you think that pacifist aliens wouldn't have developed rocketry over, say, 7000 years? or even 70,000 years? Without any wars, there would be no particular reason for the aliens not to just be patient and develop slowly. Even it took a million years to do what we've done in the last 1000, it wouldn't matter at all. For a sense of scale, it's been 60 million years since the dinosaurs.
For a violant race, however, time does matter because of the risk of killing ourselves off.
I agree it could take longer, perhaps a lot longer, but would you argue that without war rockets would -never- be invented?
Did you miss the part about the efficiency drastically dropping with time as it gets damaged? It's only going to be reflecting 90% of incoming energy for the first few nanoseconds.
Can you please give me a reference to such mirrors? I work with lasers and I'd love to get hold of a perfect mirror.
If you can find mirrors which are even 99.99% perfect I'd be extremely impressed. It's just not possible.
For a start, the wavelength of laser light is never truly monochromatic - it has a width. That width is going to put fundamental limits on the diffraction efficiency.
Same thing about the memory applies to CPU. I often need to valgrind my programs (basically run them on a 'virtual CPU' - it lets you detect memory leaks, bad pointers etc). Doing so requires a pretty powerful CPU though. It's not fun doing that on an 'average' cpu.
> Press the left mouse button and release it.
Except they'll hold the button down too long and end up dragging and fail to click. They won't retry or even realise it didn't work, but simply get confused by the next instruction.
Maybe in theory, but in practise you can go to a torrent site and download 10GB of e-books in any category that you want.
e-book readers only suck to people that follow the law. Why is this such a familiar story?
So very true. Everyone I worked with had an accident. I too got out of that business for the same reason. I was so scared that I'd lost my eyesight.
:-)
Now I do theoritical particle physics. Most I have to worry about it dropping a heavy book on my foot.
I too work with lasers. And I can attest to the beam going places you don't intend it to - I once nearly blinded myself with a pulse laser :( I was blind for about half a day, and had to have an injection in my eye. Gotta be careful.
You are put on the sex offenders list for pretty much anything, including urinating in public or kissing a girl when you are 17.
>> the rate of recidism in sexual crimes is high
Not true. It's about 5%.
This is just lies. The offending rates is less than 5%. http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r164.pdf
> I don't understand the psychology of rapists, so I can't say which position is correct.
So do some basic research. The first hit on google gives a government paper on the reoffending rates:
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r164.pdf
To summarise, less than 5% reoffend. It seems the 'bleeding hearts' win.
Actually that's not quite true - photons can bounce off each other. It's just rare.
On a different note, what you can do is have the beams have enough energy density to be close to breaking down the air. Then where they intersect there will be enough energy to break down the air and create a plasma. This will be a reflective point. It's kinda loud though.
You seem to have this wrong idea of 3rd world countries. Of course farmers are buying seed - they need to compete against the global market.
> Well, if you are poor, you're likely to get your seed from saving from the last season's crop.
No, you most likely to do whatever is required to produce as much crop as possible. That's not done by using what you saved from last season's crop. It's done by buying seed.
> And if you're going to buy it, you would buy it locally, not buy it from America.
Says who? A large amount of imports and exports from 3rd world countries are for seeds. I studied an interesting case of 2 countries that imported and exported huge amounts of potatoes between them. One country exported a lot of seed potatoes, and the other country imported the seed potatoes and grew them and exported the crop potatoes. The first country then imported the crop potatoes.
It's not always (or even usually) optimal to buy seeds locally. Chances are that some other country can produce them cheaper than your local suppliers.
> And it's implied by your argument that they weren't buying the seed in the first place, as you claim the extra demand will cause the seed companies to go out of business. If they were already buying it, why would demand go up?
The point I was trying to make was that there are companies (and whole countries) in 3rd world countries who make a living off of selling seeds.
If america buys seeds from american farmers and then gives them to poor farmers (which is what usually happens), then it means that the farmers are not buying seeds from the seed-selling companies. This means that the seed-selling companies (and countries) cannot compete.
It is a serious problem. My wife's PhD is on this topic - the effectiveness of aid. Aid is not a simple problem like most people assume.
> Companies that sell seed will go out of business just because we give a few bags to starving countries?
It's a lot more than 'a few bags' - it can make a significant impact in the targeted areas.
> The starving countries were never paying for seed in the first place, so how would they lose profits because of this?
What on earth makes you think this? Are you just making it up now as you go along? At least argue with facts instead of what you pulled out of your arse.
That's wrong. The market is not a zero sum game. It's possible for everyone to become richer.
> Just a thought - instead of sending $200 worth of bagged (ready to cook / eat) rice per child, send $200 worth of whatever kind of crop seed would grow where they live and teach them to grow it.
And then you harm the companies that sell seed. Meaning that they go out of business and so now the country doesn't have any companies that can sell seed for the next year.
Oh, and btw, most people in 3rd world countries ARE NOT STARVING.
Wait what? You're blaming linux because Seagate made a new drive that breaks the USB spec?
I'm flaming you and telling you that you are stupid because you are blaming linux for following the spec.
> As for a perfectly healthy child, it would depend on the state of vaccines at the time.
Because, obviously, you know much more about vaccinations than the researchers and can judge the state of vaccines.
Thanks for the reply - I had sort of assumed that the Sage developers were not interested in doing that. I'm very happy to hear that people are working on it :)
Sage is interesting and has been around a while, but it isn't packaged by distros - probably because it requires lots of other programs (maxima etc) but modifies them all slightly.
And yet they still can't work out how to package it for distros
Well in your original post you said you really don't know if you'll vaccinate your children, and that you wouldn't if your wife didn't like vaccinations.
I don't think complaining is completely useless. It lets people know that Microsoft is playing dirty, and hopefully results on putting pressure on Microsoft. MS have had to change various things because of people complaining - granted not as much as I'd like though.
I hope to see more pressure put on MS to follow the standards. It's an advantage to everyone (well, except MS of course). That pressure has to come from enough people complaining and actively not supporting IE etc.
(and FWIW, I am a kde developer - I am doing what I can about it)