This looks like a great opportunity to ask intelligent, critical questions. I sure hope these won't be slashdotted to smithereens with megabytes of hatemail.
My Bio organic chemistry professor has a nifty projector which simply plugs into the monitor socket of his laptop. You can nicely project computer images on a screen. If you put the projector far enough away I'm sure you can make the image 50 ft wide, and I'm pretty sure it didn't cost $20k.
But last I looked, OPEC was just about dead and oil was selling in the $10 - $20 per barrel range. (...) Oil got too expensive, so we (the oil-importing countries) simply stopped using so much of it.
The end of the oil crisis had nothing to do with us using less oil. Oil/energy consumption continues to grow. High oil prices made it worthwhile for oil importing countries to start off shore oil production, and buy oil from more diverse (i.e. not all middle eastern) sources, which reduced the control OPEC countries had on oil price, and caused the prices to drop.
Although I dont have any evidence for this, I am convinced that the death (or hybernation?) of OPEC is Saudi-Arabia's secret payment to the US for fixing the Saddam Hussayn problem.
An interesting example of human evolution has been the systematic weeding out of non religious deviants. Throughout history, and no doubt for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, religious leaders have ordered their frigtened flock to kill or cast out those who did not believe, until a significant portion (majority) of the population became genetically 'wired' as devout follower, and the majority no longer seems to need physical threat to keep them in line. Getting rid of religion would not be easier than removing xenophobia or male pattern baldness from the human gene pool.
But the new planet would be 30,000 times more distant from the Sun than the Earth, putting it a significant fraction of the distance to the nearest star.
What does he mean by significant fraction?
30000 Times the distance from the earth to the sun would be about 0.5 lightyear. The nearest star other than our sun is about 4.5 lightyears away.
If there really is a massive planet orbiting the sun at half a lightyear away, there is no hope of ever sending a probe and taking pictures.
No definite dates, but before the 21st century is over: - The USA will officially be a Christian theocracy, with several bible amendements to the constitution. This may or may not lead to the partial breakup of the US (i.e. a few states leaving the union). It will definitely cause the relations with the allies in Europe to change. - NATO will completely replace the united nations. More and more nations will be invited to join, making it a UN, but with only one member in charge instead of five. - The enonomic power will shift towards eastern asia, and China and India will emerge as major superpowers. - Some company other than Microsoft will dominate completely, once the PC has lost it's significance. Why not an asian company this time? (Nintendo, offering internet access with their game console perhaps?) - I'll watch people walk on mars, in 3D, with surround sound. - The third world war will not have taken place. - I wish I could be optimistic about Africa, but I don't believe in it... unless an affordable vaccine against AIDS is found soon, and the west changes it's aid policy from the present one that is intended to keep the local economies dependent on us, to one that works... - Physical health and longevity will be something very wealthy people can buy. Unless the Christian coalition (see my first prediction) disallows the cloning techniques involved.
This princeton professor wasn't talking about stopping treatment for severely disabled children, that can only be kept alive with great effort. He suggests killing children who are alive, but 'defective':
Singer's views on euthanasia were first detailed in his 1979 book "Practical Ethics." He has written that children less than a month old have no human consciousness and that parents should be allowed to kill a severely disabled infant to end its suffering and to increase the family's happiness. "Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all," he has written.
I have very liberal views about eutanasia and abortion, but this goes WAY too far. This guy should not be teaching 'bioethics', he could benefit by taking lessons himself. Ethics as well as history.
Techies are a special kind of animal,and deserve a day of their own. Just like the fish, cows,pigs and penguins you fed your favourite pet as a treat for animals day;-)
Luck doesn't have much to do with it. If you draw a graph of temperature against pressure, there is a very clearly defined P-T area where diamond is the stable form of carbon. At normal conditions on the earth surface, graphite is more stable than diamond, but the spontaneous conversion of diamond to graphite has such a slow theoretical rate, that you'll never see it happen.
Hm... I would be very surprised if even moon rocks didn't cost a hell of a lot more per gram than industrially synthesized diamonds. Now imagine the cost of extracting diamonds from the core of one of the gas giants, at a distance of several light-hours from the sun. These little rocks would cost you considerably more per gram than Ross Perot/Bill Gates/Steve Forbes-liver pate.
Well, it worked, didn't it? Several other companies have discontinued development of their OS because it it will never be able to compete with W2K, which for quite some time now has been just about ready to ship Just like Intel's vapourware has already pushed most competitors out of the market, even though McKinly will most likely not be ready for another year or two. Other companies have more or less discontinued development on their product becaue it will never be able to compete with McKinly, which has been just about ready for several years. Vapourware is great. True, you can't actually use it, or even sell it, but it's a fierce competitor in the marketplace.
How is the information subsequently extracted from the quantum computer thingy once it's done cracking the key? Iirc, although some elementary particles can assume several quantum states at once, once you try and measure them, you will only measure one state.
That was exactly my point, but I once again managed to make it as clear as ketchup. A healthy brain is most likely already operating at 'optimum efficiency'. Still the analogy with a neural network holds... If one node sends information to another node faster than that node can process information, communication is stalled, or data loss occurs.
Cranking up the voltage doesn't make a CPU run faster, just hotter, and if you overdo it just a teenie tiny bit it stops working.
The brain is a 'neural' computer. One of the factors that determines the speed of a neural system is the number of 'neurons'. If you could increase the number of neurons in your brain, and manage to insert them in the right place, you might find an increase in speed. The reverse is observed regularly. Brain damage that randomly takes out neurons, (due to diseases like altzheimer or encephalitis or drug/alcohol abuse for instance) often causes the victim to think more slowly, and have a lowered IQ.
Another factor in overall speed is the speed of communication between the 'neurons'. This communication takes place via chemicals called neuro transmitters. If you could find a way to optimize the transmission or production of neurotransmitters in your brain you might increase the efficieny of communication, and thereby overall speed. The reverse is often observed. Horrible diseases like parkinson's disease decrease the availability of neurotransmitters (dopamine in the case of parkinson), causing the poor victims (among many other things) to think more slowly, sometimes coming to an almost complete stop. Also, many people use drugs to manipulate the levels of certain neurotransmitters. This seems to decrease the efficiency of the brain, although users of cocaine may not actually notice they are speaking raving nonsense when they're high, and long term users often display a decrease in receptors for certain neurotransmitters, probably caused by the brain trying to compensate for the abnormal levels of the chemical (some patients of diseases of the brain benefit by prescription drugs that manipulate levels of neurotransmitters, but if it ain't broken, don't fix it).
There are probably other properties that determine the speed of a neural network, but I don't know much about the subject. Could someone post a link to some info?
Wouldn't that debris show up as something slightly dimming starlight, or something being warmer than deep space, since it can't help but absorb sun/starlight? In other words, if it were space dust, wouldn't we be abe to detect it? (Just suggestions, I'm no astrophysisist)
On a side note: (from the article mentioned in the post)
The effect was tiny, about one-ten billionth of the effect of gravity on Earth, and Anderson could have dismissed it as an irritating error.
You can't help but admire scientists like that. A similar anecdote from my university: where most would have cursed "damn, these filters arent clean. my experiment is ruined" one of them wondered what that grey pollutant was, analysed it, discovered a new effect, and a stable compound that theory predicted didn't exist.
Installing a standard installation of Red Hat or debian (haven't tried any others) or FreeBSD is more or less exactly as difficult (or easy once you've seen it before, or even know what you're doing) as installing Windows NT4 from scratch, which in turn is easier and smoother (imo) than windows 95 (haven't tried '98). The only problem is, windows comes pre-installed and mostly preconfigured, the other OS-es don't. This guy would have had the same trouble and would have had to answer the same questions when installing Windows NT, or windows 95 from scratch.
I am not sure that it is exactly the same principle, but instead of towers, it has been tried with tethers suspended from the space shuttle. Apparently it works, and the technique might be used to partially power the international space station The technical document on that page is rather big, and I haven't completely read it yet, so I might be way off, but: The space shuttle tether was 20 km long. Perhaps the technical difficulty with Tesla's plan was that the towers would have had to be impractically tall, making energy generated by them impractically expensive? I love the idea though... reminds me a bit of building pyramids or putting people on the moon.
How is this going to force 'lazy' professors to rewrite textbooks? This looks like an experimental confirmation of what I learnt from my textbooks.
I do agree with you that chemistry is a lot like physics. Chemistry has been described (by me (-: )as a specialisation of the physics of the behaviour of the electron.
How about not a monthly fee, but a fee for each time you use a product? It would be absolutely brilliant for games, which I buy (I refuse to steal software, no matter how easy it is), play a lot for a few weeks, and then never again. Or a commercial spreadsheet or wordprocessor, which I only need a few times a month (emacs is a horrible editor to write lab reports in (-; and don't tell me I really should learn how to customize it. I really should learn how to speak Japanese too).
If the revival of the dumb terminal catches on, thew OS that runs on it is not going to be windows 2000, so the playing field will be more level in that area. Perhaps some company will even make linux-client terminals?
Slashdot Mirror
This looks like a great opportunity to ask intelligent, critical questions. I sure hope these won't be slashdotted to smithereens with megabytes of hatemail.
My Bio organic chemistry professor has a nifty projector which simply plugs into the monitor socket of his laptop. You can nicely project computer images on a screen. If you put the projector far enough away I'm sure you can make the image 50 ft wide, and I'm pretty sure it didn't cost $20k.
But last I looked, OPEC was just about dead and oil was selling in the $10 - $20 per
barrel range. (...) Oil got too expensive, so we (the oil-importing countries) simply stopped using so much of it.
The end of the oil crisis had nothing to do with us using less oil. Oil/energy consumption continues to grow. High oil prices made it worthwhile for oil importing countries to start off shore oil production, and buy oil from more diverse (i.e. not all middle eastern) sources, which reduced the control OPEC countries had on oil price, and caused the prices to drop.
Although I dont have any evidence for this, I am convinced that the death (or hybernation?) of OPEC is Saudi-Arabia's secret payment to the US for fixing the Saddam Hussayn problem.
I can't believ how optimistic this guy is about the future....
Nuclear weapons banned? Dalai lama returning to Tibet? A cheap, clean energy source by 2002? Elections in China? Truth in advertising?
Not in my lifetime.
Easy, get rid of 100% of the religions
An interesting example of human evolution has been the systematic weeding out of non religious deviants. Throughout history, and no doubt for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, religious leaders have ordered their frigtened flock to kill or cast out those who did not believe, until a significant portion (majority) of the population became genetically 'wired' as devout follower, and the majority no longer seems to need physical threat to keep them in line. Getting rid of religion would not be easier than removing xenophobia or male pattern baldness from the human gene pool.
But the new planet would be 30,000 times more distant from the Sun than the Earth, putting it a significant fraction of the distance to the nearest star.
What does he mean by significant fraction?
30000 Times the distance from the earth to the sun would be about 0.5 lightyear. The nearest star other than our sun is about 4.5 lightyears away.
If there really is a massive planet orbiting the sun at half a lightyear away, there is no hope of ever sending a probe and taking pictures.
Mulder and scully should be obducted by aliens that have been conspiring with a secret government agency and the Vatican.
No definite dates, but before the 21st century is over:
- The USA will officially be a Christian theocracy, with several bible amendements to the constitution. This may or may not lead to the partial breakup of the US (i.e. a few states leaving the union). It will definitely cause the relations with the allies in Europe to change.
- NATO will completely replace the united nations. More and more nations will be invited to join, making it a UN, but with only one member in charge instead of five.
- The enonomic power will shift towards eastern asia, and China and India will emerge as major superpowers.
- Some company other than Microsoft will dominate completely, once the PC has lost it's significance. Why not an asian company this time? (Nintendo, offering internet access with their game console perhaps?)
- I'll watch people walk on mars, in 3D, with surround sound.
- The third world war will not have taken place.
- I wish I could be optimistic about Africa, but I don't believe in it... unless an affordable vaccine against AIDS is found soon, and the west changes it's aid policy from the present one that is intended to keep the local economies dependent on us, to one that works...
- Physical health and longevity will be something very wealthy people can buy. Unless the Christian coalition (see my first prediction) disallows the cloning techniques involved.
I'll collect my $100k. By the way, this isn't me, but my robot posting.
I want a shiny, transparent blue casing covering my guts.
Techies are a special kind of animal,and deserve a day of their own. Just like the fish, cows,pigs and penguins you fed your favourite pet as a treat for animals day ;-)
or if you're unlucky, a pile of graphite flakes
Luck doesn't have much to do with it. If you draw a graph of temperature against pressure, there is a very clearly defined P-T area where diamond is the stable form of carbon. At normal conditions on the earth surface, graphite is more stable than diamond, but the spontaneous conversion of diamond to graphite has such a slow theoretical rate, that you'll never see it happen.
Hm... I would be very surprised if even moon rocks didn't cost a hell of a lot more per gram than industrially synthesized diamonds. Now imagine the cost of extracting diamonds from the core of one of the gas giants, at a distance of several light-hours from the sun. These little rocks would cost you considerably more per gram than Ross Perot/Bill Gates/Steve Forbes-liver pate.
Well, it worked, didn't it? Several other companies have discontinued development of their OS because it it will never be able to compete with W2K, which for quite some time now has been just about ready to ship
Just like Intel's vapourware has already pushed most competitors out of the market, even though McKinly will most likely not be ready for another year or two. Other companies have more or less discontinued development on their product becaue it will never be able to compete with McKinly, which has been just about ready for several years. Vapourware is great. True, you can't actually use it, or even sell it, but it's a fierce competitor in the marketplace.
How is the information subsequently extracted from the quantum computer thingy once it's done cracking the key? Iirc, although some elementary particles can assume several quantum states at once, once you try and measure them, you will only measure one state.
That was exactly my point, but I once again managed to make it as clear as ketchup. A healthy brain is most likely already operating at 'optimum efficiency'.
Still the analogy with a neural network holds...
If one node sends information to another node faster than that node can process information, communication is stalled, or data loss occurs.
Cranking up the voltage doesn't make a CPU run faster, just hotter, and if you overdo it just a teenie tiny bit it stops working.
The brain is a 'neural' computer. One of the factors that determines the speed of a neural system is the number of 'neurons'. If you could increase the number of neurons in your brain, and manage to insert them in the right place, you might find an increase in speed. The reverse is observed regularly. Brain damage that randomly takes out neurons, (due to diseases like altzheimer or encephalitis or drug/alcohol abuse for instance) often causes the victim to think more slowly, and have a lowered IQ.
Another factor in overall speed is the speed of communication between the 'neurons'. This communication takes place via chemicals called neuro transmitters. If you could find a way to optimize the transmission or production of neurotransmitters in your brain you might increase the efficieny of communication, and thereby overall speed.
The reverse is often observed. Horrible diseases like parkinson's disease decrease the availability of neurotransmitters (dopamine in the case of parkinson), causing the poor victims (among many other things) to think more slowly, sometimes coming to an almost complete stop.
Also, many people use drugs to manipulate the levels of certain neurotransmitters. This seems to decrease the efficiency of the brain, although users of cocaine may not actually notice they are speaking raving nonsense when they're high, and long term users often display a decrease in receptors for certain neurotransmitters, probably caused by the brain trying to compensate for the abnormal levels of the chemical (some patients of diseases of the brain benefit by prescription drugs that manipulate levels of neurotransmitters, but if it ain't broken, don't fix it).
There are probably other properties that determine the speed of a neural network, but I don't know much about the subject. Could someone post a link to some info?
The distance of the probes is measured from earth, so I don't think miscalibrated onboard instruments could have much effect.
Wouldn't that debris show up as something slightly dimming starlight, or something being warmer than deep space, since it can't help but absorb sun/starlight? In other words, if it were space dust, wouldn't we be abe to detect it? (Just suggestions, I'm no astrophysisist)
On a side note: (from the article mentioned in the post)
The effect was tiny, about one-ten billionth of the effect of gravity on Earth, and Anderson could have dismissed it as an irritating error.
You can't help but admire scientists like that. A similar anecdote from my university: where most would have cursed "damn, these filters arent clean. my experiment is ruined" one of them wondered what that grey pollutant was, analysed it, discovered a new effect, and a stable compound that theory predicted didn't exist.Installing a standard installation of Red Hat or debian (haven't tried any others) or FreeBSD is more or less exactly as difficult (or easy once you've seen it before, or even know what you're doing) as installing Windows NT4 from scratch, which in turn is easier and smoother (imo) than windows 95 (haven't tried '98). The only problem is, windows comes pre-installed and mostly preconfigured, the other OS-es don't. This guy would have had the same trouble and would have had to answer the same questions when installing Windows NT, or windows 95 from scratch.
I am not sure that it is exactly the same principle, but instead of towers, it has been tried with tethers suspended from the space shuttle. Apparently it works, and the technique might be used to partially power the international space station
The technical document on that page is rather big, and I haven't completely read it yet, so I might be way off, but:
The space shuttle tether was 20 km long. Perhaps the technical difficulty with Tesla's plan was that the towers would have had to be impractically tall, making energy generated by them impractically expensive? I love the idea though... reminds me a bit of building pyramids or putting people on the moon.
How is this going to force 'lazy' professors to rewrite textbooks? This looks like an experimental confirmation of what I learnt from my textbooks.
I do agree with you that chemistry is a lot like physics. Chemistry has been described (by me (-: )as a specialisation of the physics of the behaviour of the electron.
Sigh. Do you even know what a dumb terminal is?
How about not a monthly fee, but a fee for each time you use a product? It would be absolutely brilliant for games, which I buy (I refuse to steal software, no matter how easy it is), play a lot for a few weeks, and then never again. Or a commercial spreadsheet or wordprocessor, which I only need a few times a month (emacs is a horrible editor to write lab reports in (-; and don't tell me I really should learn how to customize it. I really should learn how to speak Japanese too).
If the revival of the dumb terminal catches on, thew OS that runs on it is not going to be windows 2000, so the playing field will be more level in that area. Perhaps some company will even make linux-client terminals?